


where you gonna go? where you gonna go, where you gonna run to, when you get to the edge of the night? (it's time you faced the sky)

by What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion



Series: Golden Cracks and Miracles (This Bittersweet Being is Enough, With You) [9]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: And he has so much crap, And his disaster friend's disaster children, Angst with a Happy Ending, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Bato isn't having it, Hakoda (Avatar) is a Good Parent, Hakoda confronting his mistakes and failures, Hakoda is a disaster, Hakoda is realizing the Fire Nation people are people, Hakoda left and his children became terrifying warriors, He has to deal with his disaster friend, I have no regrets, I made Kya sassy, I'm a sucker for linguistic worldbuilding, It isn't fun for him, Katara yells at him a lot, Kya died and Hakoda fell apart, No beta we die like Sleep-Deprived College Kids, No one in Hakoda's life has time for his crap, Once again I am far too attached to my OCs, Or what he did in the two years he was gone, Platonic relationship fallouts, Poor Bato, This is not at all horrifying to him, War sucks, We know basically nothing about Hakoda, as both a father and friend, i kinda fixed it, kind of, let him rest, this causes problems, what are you talking about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:35:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 69,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29730528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion/pseuds/What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion
Summary: Hakoda tightened his arms around Sokka, trying to memorize the imprint of half of his world between his arms. “I will miss you so much,” he whispered, jagged and rough with emotion.Hakoda hugged Katara like he had hugged Sokka, trying to memorize the other half of his world, pressed between his arms.Hakoda stood on a ship on a westbound current, and he faced out towards the sea. The fleet left, and he did not look back.----Love is messy. Love in war is painful, and messy, and never easy. Sometimes you end up hurting people you love, even without meaning to. The real question is, when you do, what do you do? What do you do to fix it? (Can you fix it?)Hakoda confronts his failures, and his mistakes, and his children, who he never meant to hurt. Nothing and everything gets fixed, and it will will be okay in the end, even if it hurts like hell along the way.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Hakoda & Bato, Hakoda & Katara & Kya & Sokka (Avatar), Hakoda & Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Hakoda & The Gaang (Avatar), Hakoda & various OCs, Hakoda/Kya (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Series: Golden Cracks and Miracles (This Bittersweet Being is Enough, With You) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944868
Comments: 19
Kudos: 29





	1. Sand In Our Lungs, Blood On Our Tongues, Glass In Our Ribs (Don't Worry. This Story Will End And We'll All Be Okay)

**Author's Note:**

> *to the tune of "We're So Starving" by Panic! at the Disco* oHHhHhh how it's been sO LoNg, I'm so sorry I've been goooone, I have no freakin' excuseeeeees!! 
> 
> Actually, I do have one excuse. This got... way out of hand length wise. I kept thinking "this is getting too long" and then I kept having more to say. Which is a very me move. (I'm only a little sorry.)
> 
> Okay, so, I got way too attached to Hakoda with this, which is not what I meant to do, but it's whatever. 
> 
> Alright, here we go. Themes dicussed in this fic may include but are not limited to: War and all of the negative feelings associated with it, parental abandonment, ruined relationships and the resulting fallout, unhealthy coping mechanisms, grief, minors killing in self defense, child soldiers, canon typical violence, etc. My brain is very tired and I accidentaly deleted my notes once already so I may have missed some or many, so you have been warned. 
> 
> Gross stuff done with, there are some really nice moments in here. Enjoy them! This fic will feature: Bato and Kya sassing people (namely Hakoda). Some wholesome Gaang moments. Hakoda loving his kids a whole lot. And, as usual, if you see weird words in italics, consult the Language Key. Because I'm a menace, so I made languages. 
> 
> This is very long, but I hope you can struggle through and love it as much as I did!

Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe was a lot of things. Kya had always said he was a romantic. For years Bato had sworn he was the most stubborn person on the planet. 

(He had lost that title when Katara and Sokka were born.) 

Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe was a lot of things. He was a good chief, a good man. Lots of people called him a good _something,_ but those who knew him usually followed it with a _but._

He was a good chief, but he was too late to change the damage already done to his people. He was a good man, but he had a one-track mind that tended to hurt people close to him. He was a good father, but… 

But was he really? 

\----

Hakoda had met Bato when he was only two weeks old. Their fathers were close friends, and so they were friends, too. 

Hakoda couldn’t remember a time in his life when Bato hadn’t been there. It was always Hakoda and Bato, Bato and Hakoda. 

That was, until Kya entered the mix. 

Hakoda met Kya when he was nine years old. Kya had recently moved from another village to theirs with her mother. Hakoda had been in class with Bato when he had made what was, in retrospect, an incredibly offensive and sexist comment. Kya had turned around, and shot him a glare so heavy he could feel it on the back of his neck. 

(Years later, his daughter would glare at him with her mother’s eyes, and Hakoda would ache somewhere below his ribs. Katara would be her mother’s daughter, right down to beating the sexism out of him.)

Hakoda had mostly forgotten about his comment after that. Kya had not. Which is why, when Hakoda got up to walk past her, she “accidentally” stuck her foot out to trip him. Hakoda had fallen on his face, and promptly broken his nose. 

Both Bato and Kya had found this inordinately hilarious. Hakoda, dripping blood everywhere from his nose, had found it less hilarious. 

He had disliked Kya for several years after that, though she and Bato had become fast friends. Over time, she had grown on him. 

Hakoda could still remember the exact moment he realized he and Kya were friends. They had been in Bato’s house, dinking around and avoiding what they were really supposed to be doing. 

Hakoda had been draped over Bato’s couch, Bato stomping in circles, Kya starfished across the floor. Bato was stressing over a girl in the village, who he had a crippling crush on.

“Tui and La,” Hakoda complained, kicking his feet up on the couch. “If you keep stressing you're going to give _me_ an ulcer.”

“Don’t be stupid, Hakoda,” Kya said absentmindedly, grinning up at him. “You can’t get secondhand stress ulcers. What you _can_ get is a severe case of annoyance.”

Bato stomped his foot and cried, “This is no time for sass, Kya!”

Kya looked up at him, a huge grin spread over her face. “All the time is the time for sass. If I don’t roast you, who will?”

Bato scowled down at her. “Alright,” he declared. “You had this coming.” Then he lunged at her, slapping away her hands and furiously attacking her sides with his fingers.

Kya shrieked, slapping him over the head and rolling into a tight ball to escape Bato’s tickles. “Hakoda!” she wailed between furious giggles. “Help! Control your boyfriend!” 

“Fool!” Bato cackled. “He’s on my side!”

Kya unrolled from her ball, and lunged at him with a loud war cry. The two of them fell backwards, wrestling and yelling and messing up the furs all over the floor. 

“Hakoda!” Kya yelled again from where she was doing her best to give Bato a wet willy. “I’m still waiting for reinforcements!”

“Hakoda!” Bato yelled, his hands wrapped around Kya’s wrists, his knees tucked up to his chest to defend against her kicks. “If you help her, I’m disowning you!” 

Hakoda watched the two of them, laughing furiously. And suddenly he realized that Kya was his friend, too. 

He marveled at that for a few seconds. Then he grinned at his friends, still wrestling on the floor, and said, “Don’t be stupid, Bato. I’m not going to help her.”

Kya gave an indignant, “Hey!” 

Hakoda grinned. “I’m not helping either of you!” he crowed, diving for them both, and slamming them into the ground. Bato yelled, and Kya shrieked with laughter, and in the chaos of tackling them he wasn’t sure who it was that smacked him over the back of the head. 

According to Bato, Hakoda had been in love with Kya for years before he had stopped being a coward and admitted it to himself. 

All Hakoda knew was that when he had been around fifteen, his eyes had started lingering on Kya’s, and her laughs had started flipping something deep in his stomach, and she made him feel like he had swallowed sparks.

He was sixteen and on a fishing trip with Bato when he finally admitted it. Hakoda flopped out in the middle of the boat, staring up at the vast blue sky. Kya’s laugh was playing over and over in his head, and his chest was warm, and his face felt blank as he stared up at the drifting, wispy clouds. 

“Bato,” Hakoda said.

“Thank Tui and La,” Bato exclaimed, throwing a fishing rod at him that Hakoda just barely managed to catch before it hit him in the face. “Have you finally decided to help?” Bato said loudly. “Instead of just sitting there, staring into empty space?”

Hakoda didn’t answer him. He kept staring at the sky. “I’m in love with Kya,” he said blankly. “Aren’t I?”

Bato froze. Then he leapt to his feet, throwing his arms in the air and wailing, “My prayers have been answered! Halle-fucking-lujah! YEEEEESSS!!!” he yelled, slamming a foot down so hard the canoe rocked and Hakoda had to lunge to the other side to stabilize it. 

“YESSSSSSSSSS!!” Bato kept yelling, bowing to the sky and dancing as much as one could in a canoe where your friend is still draped over the bottom. “I no longer have to deal with the obliviousness, with the moronosity, with the goo-goo eyes and the denial and Tui and La, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Bato!” Hakoda yelled. “I’m serious!”

“Good!” Bato yelled back, thumping down next to Hakoda in the canoe and glaring at him. “Because I am, too. Serious when I say that if you don’t ask her out within the next month I am going to throw you into the water just to be rid of the pining.”

Hakoda’s mouth dropped open. “I’m not _pining,_ ” he protested.

Bato glared back at him. “Oh, yes you are. It’s painful. It’s ugly. It’s so cringy it hurts me from secondhand pining. And if you don’t cut it out and ask her out, I will take you out to go fishing, shove you overboard, and leave you.” 

Hakoda looked at him, biting his lip nervously. “You really think I should ask her out?” 

Bato smacked his arm. “Koda,” he said exasperatedly. “I think you should have asked her out a year ago. You’ve both been driving me crazy.”

Hakoda let out a shaky breath, chewing his lip in the way that always made Kya slap his hand away from his mouth, scolding him about mouth sores. 

Oof, bad plan. No thinking about Kya’s mannerisms right now. 

Something must have shown on his face, because Bato glared at him and said, “What,” in a voice flat enough to crack ice. 

“But,” Hakoda said nervously. “What if she doesn’t like me?”

Bato stared back at him, his face expressionless. Then he tugged off his glove, leaned over the side of the canoe, and in one fluid motion, scooped up a handful of frigid ocean water and spun, flinging it in Hakoda’s face. 

Hakoda yelped, leaping backwards and almost tipping over the canoe, swiping furiously at the icy water dripping down his collar into his shirt. “What was that for?” he yelled. 

“Being stupid,” Bato fumed. He screwed up his face in a dramatically nervous expression, hiked his hands up to flutter them by his chest, and made his voice high and mocking. “ _What if she doesn’t like me?_ Shut up, you moron. That girl has liked you for months. If you ask her out, and she says no, I will personally hunt down an orcagull and ride it over your house throwing ice lily petals everywhere.”

Bato had been right, of course. He usually was. 

Hakoda had asked out Kya when he was sixteen, and Kya’s exact words had been, “About freakin’ time.”

Bato had laughed for days about that. 

Hakoda was twenty when he married Kya. In keeping with tradition of the Southern Water Tribe, they got married at sunset, so that Tui might rise with their marriage. Hakoda and Kya made identical pledges to devote their love to each other, and to try to find happiness with the other even in the darkest of times. They kissed under Tui’s rising eye as the village behind them broke out into the marriage chants. Bato refused to admit he had cried through the whole ceremony. 

When they broke out of the kiss, Kya had leaned her forehead against Hakoda’s, and broken into delighted laughter. Hakoda had leaned into her, and his laughter had joined hers, and for a second, even though the whole village was still singing behind them, it was just the two of them. 

The party afterwards had raged into the night, drums and singing, firelight and dancing, and drunken relatives loudly congratulating them as their more sober spouses tried not to laugh at them. 

The party had been wonderful, but mostly what Hakoda remembered of that night was Kya’s eyes shimmering in the moonlight, and her hands in his. The press of her forehead on his, and her laughter rippling through the air for just the two of them. 

Hakoda was twenty four when Kya announced that she was pregnant. He was twenty five when his son came screaming into the world.

Hakoda really hadn't known just how many death threats his wife was capable of making under severe pain until she was giving birth, and he was the crux of all her miseries. If her words were to be believed, he would be castrated by the time the sun rose the next morning. 

He didn’t think she was serious, though. He was like, eighty-five percent sure.

When his mother finally laughed, and Kya’s moaning dropped away, Hakoda was pretty sure his heart had stopped beating altogether. And then the baby started screaming. His mother’s voice was soft when she called back to them, “It’s a boy.” 

Kya had let go of her death grip on Hakoda’s hand, still covered in sweat and panting, and sat up, thrusting her arms towards her mother-in-law. 

“Kanna,” she croaked. “Let me see him.”

“Hang on,” Kanna laughed. “Let me get him cleaned up.” 

Kya’s mother, Tomiq, slid up, cooing down at the still-screaming baby and scooping him out of Kanna’s arms. “Well, aren’t you beautiful,” she was murmuring. Kanna murmured in agreement, smiling down at the bundle between them, and then the two women moved towards the fire where there was a pail of water to clean him off. 

Hakoda stayed by Kya’s side, clutching her hand. “You’re amazing,” he said fervently, dropping kisses on her sweaty forehead. “You’re wonderful.” 

Kya dropped into his side and closed her eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know,” she murmured, a smile dripping into her voice. 

A rustling came from their left, and they looked up to see Tomiq smiling at them both, her eyes soft. Kya snapped upright so fast she almost banged her head on Hakoda’s chin. “Is he alright?” she said frantically. “Can I see him?” 

Tomiq laughed. “He’s beautiful, Kya. And he’s all yours.” Tomiq slid forward, dropping a kiss on her daughter’s forehead and easing a little blue bundle into Kya’s waiting arms.

Kya and Hakoda looked down, and got their first look at their son. He was still whining, his eyes squeezed shut, his face scrunched up with displeasure. He was the most beautiful thing Hakoda had ever seen. 

“ _Rogoveq,_ ” Kya breathed. “Hello, little one.”

Hakoda just stared, struggling to get words past his closing throat. Slowly, he reached out, brushing the pad of one finger, bigger than his son’s tiny closed eyes, down his son’s tiny cheek. The boy’s screaming faltered, and then morphed into hiccuping sobs. His eyes remained closed, but his face softened, and something in Hakoda melted. 

“He’s beautiful,” he choked out. “He’s perfect.” 

Kya laughed, exhausted and adoring all at once. She leaned into Hakoda’s side, her eyes never moving from their child. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, he is.”

Tomiq and Kanna smiled at the two of them. “Well, Kanna said softly. “I suppose we’ll leave you three to get acquainted.” The elder women shuffled out, laughing and shooting adoring looks over their shoulders at the new parents and grandchild.

Hakoda looked back down at his son, dropping a kiss on his wife’s forehead. For a while they just sat there in the relative silence and the strange wondering hush of new life entering the world. 

Finally Kya broke the silence, whispering, “What are we going to name him?”

Hakoda stared down at his son, the fingers of one hand tangled in his wife’s, the fingers of the other curled into the tiny blue bundle of his newborn. He took a deep breath in through his nose, and let it out through his mouth. “How about… Sokka?”

Kya snorted. “Like from the myth about the wolf warrior who lassoed the sun?” 

Hakoda shifted, squeezing her hand. “Yeah. I always loved that story. And I hope that our son grows up that brave.”

Kya shifted against him, brushing her fingers over their son’s closed eyelids. “Sokka,” she murmured. “I think I might actually like that.”

“Oh, you might, might you?”

Kya smacked him, and he broke out into laughter. He slid tentatively back into her side, hoping not to get smacked again. Kya tipped her head at their son, and he could feel her smile. “Sokka,” she said. “That’s a good name.” 

Sokka shifted in the bundle, as if in agreement. Kya laughed, tired and brilliant. Hakoda closed his eyes, and thanked the spirits.

\----

Hakoda had never loved anyone as much as he loved Sokka. Not his father, not his mother, not even Kya, horrible as it sounded. He loved Sokka more than the moon, more than the sun, and the stars, and the sea itself.

But some days, it became a bit of a mantra. _I love Sokka, I love Sokka, I love Sokka more than anything else._ Over and over and over again, to remind himself that no, Sokka may be more infuriating than anyone else on the whole planet right now, but you don’t hate him, Hakoda, you _don’t._ You love him, you love him, you love hi-

“SOKKA!” Hakoda yelled, darting for his son, who was about to submerge his whole hand in the boiling stew Kanna was making. 

Sokka froze, tiny fingers suspended inches above the bubbling liquid, blue eyes wide as he stared back at his father, his mouth slightly ajar. 

Hakoda hadn’t fully stopped him, but the shout and the momentary distraction were enough for Kanna to notice, and swoop in, swinging Sokka into her arms and away from the fire. 

Hakoda heaved a sigh of relief as Kanna swept a now whining Sokka away from his imminent finger decimation. _You love Sokka, you love Sokka, you love him more than anything in the world…_

“What were you thinking?” Hakoda cried, pulling Sokka into his arms. 

“Jus’ wan’ed touch it,” Sokka pouted, unsuccessfully trying to fold his arms over his chest. 

“Sokka, you can’t touch that,” Hakoda chastised, trying his best to keep his temper in check. “It’s too hot, it will burn you, and it will hurt.”

Sokka’s eyes widened, his mouth opening with something like understanding. “Hot from the fire?” he asked.

Hakoda nodded, inwardly marveling a bit at his son’s logic. “Yes. The fire makes it hot, and the heat from the fire can burn you just like the soup can.”

“Because they’s both hot?”

“Yes. Because they’re both hot, and we can’t handle that kind of heat.” Hakoda put one finger under Sokka’s chin, and tipped it up to look Sokka in the eyes. “You have to be careful with fire, because it can hurt you. Okay? Do you understand me?”

Sokka looked back at him, digesting that for a few seconds. Then he nodded, decisively. Stubbornly. “Okay, Daddy,” he said. “I’ll be careful.” 

Hakoda breathed a sigh of relief, because hopefully this wouldn’t be an issue again. 

(He didn’t know. He could never have known. His son would forget his promise, and dive into a war of flames with eyes unafraid of things as trivial as burns.)

Having a kid was exhausting. 

Having a kid in the middle of a war was terrifying. 

The Southern Water Tribe had been involved in the war for the first forty-some years. But they had always been more spread out, less centralized, less war-ready than their sister tribe. The raids decimated the waterbenders, and with them the population. Almost one hundred years into the war, and the Southern Water Tribe was little more than a shadow. 

For the most part, they weren’t bothered by the Fire Nation directly. They weren’t worth it. 

But still. Still. 

The older men in the village, with their glazed eyes and ropy burns and the way they spat in the snow and curled their hands into fists to stop the shaking when they spoke of the Fire Nation. The older women with hard faces and hard eyes and the way they stiffened and hid away everything when they spoke of the war, of their sons and brothers and husbands, fathers and friends and families that went away to fight a losing battle and never returned. 

Hakoda had grown up in the choking shadow of a war, and the war had only grown worse since then. His son would grow up in the shadow of a losing fight. 

Sokka was around seven months old when Kya announced her next pregnancy. Hakoda laughed and yelled and cheered when Kya told him. He ignored the pit in his stomach, below the floating feeling. 

Sokka couldn’t wait to have a little sister.

That night, he woke up to a cold bed. He found Kya sitting in the darkness just outside their tent’s entrance, muffled sobs not quite masked by her hand over her mouth, and the heaviness in his stomach choked him. 

His son would grow up in the shadow of a losing fight. So would his next child. And Kya felt the emptiness, too. The despair. Knowing your children would never be free.

(Hakoda didn’t know, not then. Not yet. Didn’t know that his children, with their heavy hearts and bruised bones and furious, vicious love would do more than live in the shadow of the war. He didn’t know that they would turn the tide. Not then. Not yet.)

In the winter of the South Pole, it was hard to tell when exactly one day ended and the next began. Dark for so long. 

It was because of this that no one really knew exactly what day Katara had been born. 

_(The winter solstice,_ Kya had told him once. _I’m sure._

 _How do you know?_ Hakoda had asked her. 

_I just do,_ she replied.)

Sokka had been told to wait out with Tomiq outside until his mother was done giving birth. Sokka, for his part, seemed displeased with this, but reluctantly agreed once the first of Kya’s groans began to filter out of the room. 

Katara came fast. Later, it would be a joke between Kya and Hakoda. That Katara never waited, not even for them. Kya went into labor in the dead of night, and within forty minutes, Hakoda’s daughter came screaming into the world.

When she came out, Kanna laughed, and she smiled, and shook her head, and said, “Well, now you two will certainly have your hands full.”

Kya dropped back against a pillow, gasping and covered in sweat. Hakoda leaned down, dropping a reverent kiss to her forehead and closing his eyes. “You’re amazing,” he whispered. “There aren’t words.”

“And yet you’re still talking,” Kya huffed, a teasing smile on her face. 

“Kya,” Kanna scolded, slipping up to the two of them. “Be nice to your husband. He’s delicate.”

“Hey!” Hakoda said. Kya started laughing, loud and wonderful, and Hakoda wasn’t sure there was any sweeter sound in the world. 

Kanna smiled at them, eyes soft and loving. “Here,” she said softly, sliding a blue bundle into Kya’s arms. “Congratulations,” she whispered. “Your first daughter.”

Kya gasped a little, a tiny breath that slipped from her lips like snow from the sky. She laughed softly, the sound barely reaching Hakoda’s ears over his daughter’s screams. 

For the second time, Hakoda’s breath caught in his chest, noise dying in his throat as his world tilted on its axis, twisting to revolve around a new kind of gravity, caught between everything he loved, enough to stop the sun in the very sky. 

He reached down and brushed a shaking finger over her cheek. She was even smaller than Sokka had been, and Hakoda knew he would lay down anything, everything to keep her safe. To keep them safe. Kya and Sokka and this new, tiny baby.

His voice was choked when he finally managed to push out, “She’s beautiful.”

Kya laughed, tired and beautiful and everything, everything. 

Kanna smiled at them, and then walked out. From beyond the door, they could hear Sokka immediately begin begging Kanna for all the information about his new little sibling. Kya’s chest shook against Hakoda’s as she stifled her snickers. “How much do you want to bet he’s literally jumping with joy?”

Hakoda grinned. “And tugging at her dress.”

“I give it five minutes before he pushes his way in.” 

“I guess we better have a name ready before then.”

They fell back into silence, staring at the tiny wailing baby in Kya’’s arms. “Do you have an idea?” Hakoda said quietly.

Kya shot him an amused smile. “What, you named the last one, so now it’s my turn?” 

Hakoda grinned back at her. “ _Weeeell-_ ” 

Kya’s hand rose up to smack him, and he dove out of the way, snickering. Kya huffed, readjusting her grip on the squalling baby, and trying very hard not to grin at him. “Well, I _was_ going to let you have some input, but since you said _that,_ I think I will. I’m going to name her, and you’re going to have to be okay with anything I choose.”

Hakoda resurfaced, grinning furiously, and gave his wife a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am.” 

Kya turned her attention back to their daughter, her face softening like the sunrise, in that way it only did for people she would lay down anything for. She was silent for a few minutes, except for rocking her back and forth and making small cooing noises to try to stem the flow of crying. 

Then, quietly, she said, “Well, we’ve already named one child after a myth. It would be a shame to break our streak.”

Hakoda rubbed his fingers over the back of her hand. “What are you thinking?”

Kya hummed, staring down at their daughter, tiny and young and wonderful. “Do you remember,” she said slowly, “that old story about the girl who sang the ocean to the stars?”

Hakoda let out a slow breath, and he smiled. “The one who tamed the tsunami and threw up water to catch the stars and make the southern lights?”

Kya nodded, still smiling. “What do you think?”

Hakoda laughed, shaking his head. “I thought I didn’t get a say.”

Kya stilled. “Oh. Yeah. That’s right. You don’t. You just get to suck it up.” She looked down at their daughter, tired and soft and dripping love. 

“Alright then,” Kya said quietly. She smiled, and whispered, “Katara it is.”

Hakoda reached down and kissed Kya’s forehead. “I think it’s perfect.”

Kya looked up at him, grinning. “Guess what you get to do now?” she said, looking vaguely like a wolf in her amusement. 

Hakoda raised an eyebrow.

Kya nudged his side with her elbow, still grinning. “You get to go get Sokka.”

Hakoda let out a soft swear word, and Kya broke down laughing. “Have fun,” she wheezed. 

“You’re a troll,” he shot back at her, rising to his feet to go get their overexcitable son.

Kya preened. “Thank you.”

Hakoda rolled his eyes, failing to shove down the laugh that bubbled out of his chest.

He slipped out into the adjoining room. Immediately, something slammed into his legs. “Daddy!” Sokka shrieked, attaching to him like a leech. “Is the baby okay? Is it a boy? A girl? _Daddy tell me something NOW!"_

Hakoda laughed at Sokka, shaking his legs furiously. Or, shaking them as well as a one and a half year old could. 

He leaned down, sweeping Sokka up in his arms. “Why don’t you come and see for yourself,” he said, smiling. 

Sokka’s eyes widened, and his mouth dropped. He nodded furiously, his eyes sparkling. Hakoda held back his snickers, and slipped back into the room.

Kya looked up, smiling at them. Her face was tired, and her limbs streaked with sweat, and her eyes sparkled like stars at night, and she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. 

“Well, hello, new big brother,” she said softly, grinning at Sokka.

Sokka’s eyes widened to the size of saucers, and he began bouncing up and down in Hakoda’s arms so excitedly Hakoda almost dropped him. “Can I see her, Mommy?” he cried. “Please, please, please?” 

Kya laughed. “Of course you can,” she said, smile evident even in her voice. 

Hakoda set Sokka down, and walked them over to where Kya was still holding their wailing daughter. Sokka leaned up on his tiptoes to try and get a glimpse of his sister, his eyes wide. 

Hakoda leaned over, brushing a light kiss against Kya’s lips as she carefully leaned their daughter into his arms. 

He turned around to see Sokka watching him, his little mouth hanging open in amazement. Hakoda got down on both knees and eased the tiny bundle into Sokka’s arms, curling his son’s tiny fingers into the blankets and placing one hand beneath the bundle, just in case.

“Sokka,” he whispered. “This is Katara. Katara, this is your older brother.”

And then, for the first time since she had come into the world, Katara stopped screaming. Her eyes scrunched, and then struggled open. Her brilliant blue gaze fixed, instantly and immediately, onto Sokka, and she stared at him like he was the sun, her tiny mouth opening in astonishment. 

(Years later, Katara would still look at her brother like he hung the moon, and Hakoda would wonder why he had ever thought his world could be anything but them.)

Sokka’s eyes widened, and he just stared down at her in wonder, like he would do anything for her. 

(He would. He would follow her around the world, and she would follow him right back, and before either of them were sixteen, they would be more than Hakoda would in his whole life. Not that Hakoda knew that though. Not yet.)

When Hakoda asked to take Katara back, Sokka fully and stubbornly refused, plopping to the floor and curling his chubby arms around his tiny sister, as if that alone would stop Hakoda in his tracks. Although, to be fair to him, it did. Hakoda huffed a laugh, and sat down with him on the floor until Sokka fell asleep. Katara had fallen asleep in her brother’s arms. 

For a second, Hakoda just sat there, silent. Watching his two children fall asleep against each other. 

He looked up, and Kya was still awake, her eyes fixed on their children, her mouth curled in the same exhausted, quietly joyful smile he was sure he had just been sporting. Was still sporting. 

He tore his eyes from his wife, and leaned down, scooping up both his children at once. Carefully, he walked back to the bed, and slid in next to Kya. She smiled, raising up a little to ease Katara out of Sokka’s arms and into her own. Hakoda slid up next to her, tucking Sokka carefully between them. His head rolled back, and he let out a loud snore.

Kya looked up and met his eyes, stifling giggles. Hakoda shook his head. “He’s so loud,” he whispered.

“Where do you think he gets it from?” Kya shot back, grinning. Hakoda smacked her shoulder lightly, and she leaned away, trying and failing to suppress her giggles.

Hakoda leaned back into the pillow, Kya slumping in next to him after a second.

She looked over at him, her hair twisting on the pillow, bunching up and crinkling under her cheek. She smiled at him, her eyes crinkling at the edges, and something in Hakoda’s chest twisted and tightened and sang all at once. 

Strange, he thought. That the times you were the happiest you could say the least about. Pain was something you could dive into and never reach the bottom of the things you could say about it. But happiness? What could be said that you didn’t already know. There was so little to say about what it was like to be happy, because it took so little to be happy. You didn’t have to describe it for someone to know it. It just was. 

But, if he had to describe it, Hakoda thought that maybe happiness was like starlight. Like dancing in the sun, and dancing in the dark, and laughing to the open ice, because nothing can hear you. Because everything can hear you. Happiness was like laughing with no one around to hear. Because it meant nothing and everything all at once.

And if happiness was noise in the silence, then by the spirits was he singing now. 

Hakoda fell asleep there, with his wife and his children and happiness enough to fill a thousand churches with song. 

He was oblivious to Kanna and Tomiq, barely one room away and staring at the full moon over the rising tide in equal parts terror and despair. Oblivious to Kanna’s whispered pleas to Tui and La to save their granddaughter. Oblivious to Tomiq, staring at the moon that rose with their granddaughter, and cursing it. 

Oblivious to Kanna and Tomiq, holding hands in the cold that made their bones ache, pressing their foreheads together and praying for time. Time for Katara, who rose with the moon and the ocean, and had been born in a war that painted a target on her back by the simple means of her own existence. 

Oblivious to Kanna and Tomiq, who already knew about the oceans buried in his daughters viens. Kanna and Tomiq, who would never say a word of it.

In the morning, Hakoda woke up to Sokka shaking him awake and already babbling with excitement. He went out, and greeted Kanna and Tomiq for breakfast, and both of them smiled, and neither of them said a word, and that was that. 

(That was Hakoda not knowing Katara was a waterbender until Sokka broke through the thin ice over the rough current left of the village and Katara dove in after him like the water could never scare her. 

That was Hakoda not knowing Katara was a waterbender until she pressed a shaky kiss to Sokka’s forehead, and made a fist over his mouth, and _pulled,_ and two lungs worth of water came rushing out.

That was Hakoda and Kya explaining waterbending to their two children, and watching Katara’s blue eyes widen, and grappling with the knowledge that whether she knew it or not, she already knew more about waterbending than any of them could give her. 

That was Hakoda sitting with Kya in the dead of night, whispering, _What are we going to do?_ with Kya shaking her head and fighting back tears and saying, _I don’t know._ Both of them crying because their daughter was a waterbender, and neither of them knew how to help her.)

(Looking back, it was almost funny. Katara's first act of waterbending was for her brother. Looking back, it was almost funny, because Katara always did put everyone else before herself. But it was ‘almost’ funny, because it wasn’t funny at all. Because Katara never did know how to put herself first when it mattered, and it cost her her childhood and more, and Hakoda could never shake the feeling that her missing childhood was kind of his fault, too.)

It quickly became evident that though Katara was his daughter, she was first and foremost Sokka’s sister. Hakoda had never seen a child love another child so much. It was adorable.

It took a few months for it to sink in for Sokka that though Katara was his little sister, she was still a baby. She couldn’t just get up and play the games Sokka liked. 

Sokka took this surprisingly well. He decided that if she couldn’t play with him, the only real solution was to play with her. 

Normally, a one and a half year old would not be considered a babysitter, but Sokka took to his role like a turtleseal to water. 

Katara followed in Sokka’s footsteps with abnormally fast speech development. By the time she was one and a half, she and Sokka were exchanging full sentences. Simple ones, but still. 

Sokka’s first steps had been towards his parents, sitting together across the room. 

Katara’s first steps, halting and carefully reckless, were towards Sokka.

Sokka had stubbed his toe, and fallen immediately into tears. And Katara had just pulled herself to her feet, and started stumbling towards him. In the chaos of Katara’s first steps, Sokka had entirely forgotten about his toe, his delight exclusively reserved for his little sister, tumbling into his arms. 

Hakoda and Kya might have been lying if they said they weren’t a little jealous, but they couldn’t be too jealous. Not when Katara was clinging to Sokka, laughing delightedly, and Sokka was cheering her on, dropping clumsy kisses on her cheeks.

Having two children, Kya and Hakoda were quickly realizing, while delightful at times, could be extremely exhausting. But it was wonderful, too. 

Whenever Hakoda’s mother spoke about him growing up, she swore that time flew faster than a current, and it had felt like it was ending just as it began. Hakoda had thought that sounded like turtleseal crap at the time. But now he was starting to get it. 

The years flew past, and suddenly Katara was up to his knee, and Sokka nearly to his hip, and both of them were starting to be real people, all fierce emotion and passionate opinions. 

Katara had taken to experimenting with her waterbending, and Sokka had decided boomerangs deserved his attention. This of course meant that their house was full of tiny splashes and swishing metal in the air. 

Sokka wasn’t sure he had ever heard Kya laugh louder than the time Sokka hit Katara in the head with his boomerang, and Katara turned around and immediately threw a spray of water directly into his face. 

Sokka’s splutters combined with Katara’s astonished laughter had been too much for Kya, and she had broken down in howls. By way of the contagiousness of laughter, all four of them had ended up on the ground, laughing hysterically without it being totally clear what they were laughing at, exactly. 

To this day, it was one of Hakoda’s favorite memories of their family. 

A few days after Kya’s birthday, when Sokka was nine and Katara was seven, Kya shook him awake in the dead of night. 

“Hakoda,” she whispered.

Hakoda groaned in response, rolling over and burying his head under his hands. 

“‘Koda, get up,” Kya said, poking him insistently. 

“It’s too late for this,” he groaned.

A slight rustling issued from beside him, furs on shifting fabric. Then Kya’s pillow smacked him over the face. 

He bolted upright to Kya’s barely stifled laughter, glaring at her halfheartedly. “What was that for?” he hissed, keeping his voice low on the knowledge that their children were asleep barely a room away. 

Kya grinned at him in the darkness, her eyes sparking mischievously. Hakoda looked her up and down in confusion, finally registering that she was fully dressed for the outdoors in the middle of the night. “Where are you going?” he asked.

Kya’s teeth flashed in the dim light, her face glowing with excitement. “Where are _we_ going, you mean.” She poked him in the side again, too fast for him to dodge. “Come on,” she whispered, smiling. “I want you to see something.

Which is why Hakoda ended up yanking on his parka and heavy boots in the middle of the night, cursing under his breath and rolling his eyes at his wife a few feet away, bouncing eagerly on the balls of her feet. And if he was fighting a smile as he did it, amused by his wife’s antics, that was no one’s business but his own. 

As soon as his boots were on and his parka over his head, Kya seized his hand and pulled him through the house towards the door. “Come on, come on, before it vanishes,” she said excitedly.

“Before what vanishes?” Hakoda asked, narrowly avoiding tripping over a bowl sitting on the floor. Sokka really was horrible about putting them away. 

Kya tugged him out the door and out into the snow. She stopped barely a few feet from the door, in her old footprints. “Look,” she whispered, pointing at the sky.

Hakoda looked up. For a second nothing caught his eyes but the snowflakes drifting through the air. He was only seconds away from saying, _Yes, Kya, it’s snowing. In the South Pole. Imagine that._ But the snowflakes stopped him. Why did they look like they were glowing, far more so than usual?

Then he looked even further up, and his breath caught in his chest. There, hanging in the sky so far above them. Twisting through the clouds like a strange current, suspended among the stars, were the Southern lights.

Gold and blue, purple and pink and green, twisting through the sky and the stars and sending streaks of light down through the atmosphere. 

Hakoda’s eyes traced the curling colors, morphing even as he watched. Like some spirit had reached up and dragged its fingers dipped in paint and stardust through the sky, leaving streaks of a strange and wonderful beauty.

“Wow,” he whispered.

Kya bumped his side, and when he looked down, she was smiling smugly at him. “Was it worth it?” she asked, her face set in the smile it always was when she knew she was right.

Hakoda grinned. He never was one to turn down an opportunity, especially one as perfect as this.

“Hmm,” he said, as if contemplating. “Was it worth it?” He made a face, and shook his head, fighting a grin. “Not yet.”

Kya made a faux offended face, also obviously fighting a smile. “Not yet?” she asked. “Well then, good sir. What will we be doing to remedy that?”

Hakoda grinned. He stepped out into the drifting snow and biting cold, dropping into a deep bow. “May I have this dance, Fair Lady?” he asked, adopting a dramatic voice. 

Kya giggled, covering her face with her hands for a second to compose herself. Kind of. Her face resurfaced from her hands, glowing brighter than the lights above them, smiling. She dropped into a clumsy curtsy. “Why of course, Kind Sir,” she said, also adopting a strange voice.

Hakoda slipped up, dropping his hands onto her hips. She leaned up, winding her arms around his neck. 

The two of them slipped out further into the snow drifts and the flakes drifting and swinging in the breeze. They spun and swayed, pressed against each other and laughing in the cold, noses icy and cheeks flushed, their footprints slowly vanishing and reappearing, twisting in and out of existence like their voices, and nothing else mattered. Dancing in the dark, without any music at all. Just the two of them, and the stars, and the Southern lights shining through the snow.

Three days later, snow turned black before it hit the ground, and a ship arrived flying red flags, and Hakoda’s world crumbled on its fragile axis. 

The ship smashed through the thin walls of the village. There was a hiss, and a shriek of metal, and the front of the ship fell open, a gaping monster waiting to swallow them all. 

Somewhere behind him, Hakoda could hear the shaking voice of one of the men who had gone to war before they withdrew. “Oh spirits,” he moaned, his voice trembling in time with the shudders in the ice. “Oh gods. Have mercy.”

And then the smoke cleared, and soldiers in red were charging out at them, and they were running right back, and for the first time in his life, Hakoda was going to spill blood. Hakoda was going to kill someone today, and he didn’t have time to grieve that, because the city of his life was crumbling into the sea, and his world was burning on its cracking axis, and he had things to protect.

The first soldier Hakoda met was a man. A burst of fire sprayed at Hakoda’s face, and terror rushed down his spine, because _oh. This_ was bending. Bending that wasn’t a few drops circling his daughter’s tiny wrist. This could kill him.

He ducked under the blast, and stabbed his spear up into the man’s armpit. The man screamed, and clutched at the spear, and Hakoda planted his feet and pulled it out with a sickening squelch. He might have stopped dead right there, staring at the blood over the ground, losing himself in the spreading pool of red. 

But then another soldier was diving at him, her hands wreathed in flame, landing a vicious kick in his stomach and spinning around to slice flames at his exposed neck. He ducked beneath her hand and stabbed at her exposed wrist, sure the blow would land. But she twisted her hand at the last second, the bone spear screeching against her metal gauntlet.

She spun around, yanking his spear from his hands and bringing another swath of fire at his face. For a split second, he caught a glimpse of her eyes through the faceplate. Narrowed in anger and something he would later realize was fear. A harsh amber-gold, reflecting the flames cupped in her palm. Human, and not so unlike him at all. 

Hakoda was a good warrior, but untested. This woman, with the furious flames and golden eyes and faceplate to hide her terror, had seen battle. And she was better than him. 

Hakoda would have died right then and there if Huan, a man only a year younger than him, hadn’t appeared out of nowhere, swinging a spear at her throat. 

The woman just managed to leap backwards out of the way, sending Hakoda to the ground with a swift kick to the shoulder and immediately punching a bolt of flames at Huan, that caught him on the arm, setting his parka on fire and scorching his arm beneath it. 

Haun shrieked in pain, crumpling to the ground and dumping snow over the fire to put it out, and the woman vanished into the fray, her spot taken by two others, not nearly her level of skill. 

Hakoda’s spear claimed both of them. He kept going, and didn’t think about their last wheezed words to one another as they lay in the snow so far from their home.

(These kinds of wonderings, about the woman’s fear and the men that lay in the snow a world away from their home, bleeding out for a war they didn’t start, were things that would come with the years, after the pain of loss had faded some, and his children were putting the world back together with their scarred hands. 

Hakoda would lay awake at night, wondering about those who had died at his hand, and those who had not. Had he cost someone out there wives or husbands, brothers or sisters? From whom had he stolen children with the cold grip of death? He didn’t know. But he knew he had. And the more he thought about it, the more he hated it. The more ghosts of people he didn’t know haunted him.

What had they whispered, those men dying in the snow? He would never know. It ached.)

The fight dragged on. And then suddenly the firebenders were retreating. 

Hakoda watched them go, but he couldn’t pick out which one was the woman. He found himself, absurdly, hoping she wasn’t one of the bodies on the ground, staining the snow red. 

Bato’s hand dropped on his shoulder, too tight and too heavy. Trembling, but just barely.

“That was too easy,” he panted. Hakoda wanted to protest that it hadn’t been easy, but he knew Bato was right. Bato plowed ahead. 

“What were they here for?” he asked, in a voice that might have seemed aggressive if Hakoda hadn’t known it was terror. “What did they get that they were looking for?”

“I don’t know,” Hakoda said honestly, and his voice hung grim between them. 

And then they heard Katara screaming.

Hakoda looked back, and his daughter was tearing through the snow towards them, her face streaked with tears and terrified. Something tightened his throat, and he took off, Bato trailing in his footsteps. 

He tore past Katara, who seemed unharmed. His legs slammed against the ground, each step shooting a spike of pain up through his limbs. A constant reminder of everything he had to lose. That this pain would be nothing compared to…

Hakoda kept running.

He skidded to a stop at the mouth of their tent, tearing open the flap and diving in. 

The first thing he registered was that the candle that hung from the ceiling had gone out, gray smoke drifting in loose curls up from the blackened wick. The second thing he registered was the blood.

He staggered through the spreading pool of red, crumpling to his knees next to the body on the ground. Everything smelled like smoke, and burnt flesh, and the axis was splintering, and he was tilting, spinning out of orbit. He was vaguely aware of his mouth moving, unconsciously forming words he couldn’t remember telling his tongue to make. 

_No._

His fingers made contact with the arm of the body, red smearing from his glove, or the sleeve, he couldn’t tell. They were both red, and could almost have been Fire Nation.

_No._

He turned the body over, scorch marks spreading from just below her collarbone all the way to her hip, burned far enough down that he could see the glimpse of a black spur that might have been a rib.

_No._

Kya’s face stared back up at him, streaked with ash and crumpled with the ghost of unimaginable pain, her eyes closed, and her expression empty. Unmistakably dead. 

_No. No, no, no._

The noise that slipped from Hakoda’s mouth was not a scream. It hovered somewhere between a gasp and a sob and a howl, a low, guttural moan that stretched and pulled and scraped against his cracking edges, coming out bloody and ruined as himself. 

Hakoda stared at his wife’s dead face, and what was left of his world cracked and splintered and fell off any semblance on what used to be an axis, once. Somewhere behind him, Katara was sobbing, and Sokka was standing in horrified silence, and he could hear Bato’s choked crying. 

But none of that mattered, because Kya was dead between his arms, and he was in the middle of an ocean without a ship, horizon nowhere to be seen. 

Hakoda didn’t remember much of the funeral rites. Honestly, he didn’t remember much of the next six months at all. 

Through the haze of pain and grief and loss, the world had seemed painted in grayscale, and most of what he could remember was an ever present ache in his bones, like Kya had physically been a part of him, and her loss had left him empty. 

The only thing he remembered of cleansing the house’s air was a vague impression of spotting Kya’s necklace on the floor, and breaking down. Katara had come up behind him, and hugged him as best as her small arms could, and hummed along to an old lullaby. 

His memories of the _teraniq,_ the block of ice that was used to return bodies to Tui and La, consisted only of curling an ice lily between Kya’s cupped, icy fingers. Kanna and Katara slipped their flowers in without incident, but when it was Sokka’s turn, he froze. Katara slid up, curling her fingers into his, and walking with him. 

Hakoda was too lost to his grief, still too lost to himself to realize what was wrong with it.

He was almost glad Tomiq had died last spring, so she didn’t have to see this.

The _teraniq_ slipped away over the waves, and with it any shred of hope left that he would emerge this war whole. 

Hakoda walked back to the house on numb legs, his chest empty and echoing with space. He sat down in front of the fire, the flickering coals, and stared into the dull light as if looking for answers. If there _were_ answers buried in the coals, he never found them. 

He didn’t know where Sokka and Katara were. That would stay the same for the next few months. The next few years, if he was being honest with himself.

(No. No, that’s wrong. 

Because if he were to be completely honest with himself, really and truly, he would admit that the children he knew might as well have drifted out to sea with his wife’s cold body, never to be seen again. It would take years before he stood on the deck of a Fire Nation ship, Katara spitting venomous words at him, her eyes narrowed in fury and grief in equal measure, all to realize that his children had become different people right in front of him, and his eyes had been so clouded by loss that he hadn’t realized until it was already too late. 

It would be years before he realized that he had stopped knowing where his children were, and he would never truly know again.)

The next year blurred together in his memories, everything a sick gray color, tinged with a soul-deep ache. Kya had drifted out to sea, and she had taken what was left of him with her. 

Most days, he stayed in his bed long after noon. Every morning without fail, Katara would come in and hoist herself up onto his bed, shaking him with tiny hands and telling him it was time to wake up.

The very first day she did it, he rolled over to face her, and for a split second, he could almost think she was Kya. He rolled over and buried his face in the blankets, clamping his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes shut, just barely managing to quell the scream building in his throat. 

Because how could the world be so cruel, to wake him with his wife’s face and his daughter’s eyes, and remind him of everything he had lost?

He told Katara to let him sleep longer. He always did. She always came to wake him anyway. 

For the first few weeks, Sokka came with Katara to wake him up. When Hakoda rolled over every morning to avoid Katara, Sokka’s face always pinched in disappointment and something Hakoda would later realize was the seeds of an anger that would fester in his absence. He stopped coming after the first few weeks. But Katara never did. 

And wasn’t that just it? Katara never stopped coming for the people she loved. She never gave up on them, even if they didn’t deserve anything she gave. But Sokka would stop trying to help after a while. 

Both would happen. Katara would never stop helping him. And Sokka would help plan an invasion, and grin at him on a Fire Nation ship, but he would let Hakoda live on his own, and he didn’t try to help Hakoda. He wouldn’t be sure which one hurt more, receiving help he didn’t deserve, or receiving nothing at all.

In this strange gray year of his life, two things provided structure to the meaningless flow of his days. Katara’s visits in the morning, with their prodding from small fingers and aches that echoed in his bones. And Bato’s visits in the afternoon. 

Bato was a little less gentle than Hakoda’s daughter, but no less persistent. These visits didn’t involve faces too close to his wife’s, and tiny fingers prodding his side and shaking him awake. These visits involved the thud of boots on the snow, and huge hands on his shoulders, and Bato’s face swimming in concern. 

Every afternoon, Bato would walk into his room, and wrestle him out of bed if he wasn’t already, and make him eat something and wash himself and generally be at least a little bit functional.

It took almost a year. 

Honestly, Hakoda was a little shocked it didn’t come sooner. But time passed, and it still came. 

Bato was a patient person. Far more patient than Hakoda deserved, with his tendency to hurt people he loved, and his consistent habits of breaking things he cared about. 

But patience only goes so far, and even the thickest of loves runs thin with time and exhaustion. So when, almost a year after Kya’s death, Bato marched in, looking as pissed as Hakoda had ever seen him, it wasn’t a huge shock. 

Bato walked into his room, and crossed his arms over his chest, staring down at his friend, his face creased in annoyance and disappointment and something like fury. “‘Koda,” he said, voice flat and tired. Tired of being gentle, tired of aching. Tired of Hakoda, falling apart at the seams and leaving everyone else to pick him up.

“‘Koda,” Bato repeated. “It’s time to get up.”

Hakoda let out a long breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he voluntarily washed his hair. His limbs hung heavy, as if weighted down by emptiness, and his eyes ached from tears not yet shed. He rolled over. 

“Go away,” he mumbled.

For a second, silence pervaded the room. Silence was like that. It spilled, and spread, and slipped into the emptiness, coiling in the hollow space where things used to be, covering and choking and drowning every shred of noise. 

And then Bato let out a noise. A snarling, scraping sound of raw fury, of exhausted patience, it ripped the silence away with razor claws and left Hakoda laying in stunned fear. 

Bato’s hands came down hard on his shoulders, and he yanked him upright and spun him around in a sharp movement that gave Hakoda whiplash. 

Bato leaned down, his hands painfully tight on Hakoda’s shoulders, and looked him in the eye. It was then that Hakoda realized he had been avoiding Bato’s eyes as much as he could since Kya died. Bato was blunt, and he had no time for hiding, and his eyes didn’t either. 

Bato leaned down, his sharp eyes digging into Hakoda’s like fishhooks, and suddenly there was nowhere to hide. 

“I’ve had it,” Bato snarled, and he sounded angrier than Hakoda had ever seen him. “I’ve given you space. I’ve given you time. Kanna and Katara and Sokka and me. We have given you space, and time, and support, so that you could grieve. But enough is enough. You aren’t grieving. You’re wallowing, and I won’t let it happen anymore.”

Hakoda stared back at him, eyes wide. Bato glared back at him, his hands trapping Hakoda in place, his eyes pinning him into the ground worse than knives.

“You aren’t grieving,” Bato repeated. “You’re wallowing, and it isn’t helping you, and I’m putting a stop to it now.”

Anger reared up in Hakoda’s chest, a sudden wave of icy shards that shredded his lungs even as they passed through him and beyond, and for a split second he wanted to let them all out, uncaring who they hurt. So he did. 

“I _am_ grieving,” he snarled. “I’m doing it my way. Who are you to tell me how to mourn? What do you know about anything?”

Bato recoiled, hurt flashing over his face for a split second, and for a brief second, Hakoda regretted it. 

Then the anger rushed back in like a tidal wave, just as furious and twice as devastating. “What do I know about anything?” Bato repeated, his voice rising in anger. “What do I know about anything?! Well,” he laughed, bitter and furious and completely unforgiving. 

“For one, I know _you._ I know that when your father died, bastard that he was, you said ‘Good riddance,’ and washed your hands of him and never looked back. I know that when Tomiq died, you cried with Kya, and you said your goodbyes, and you kept going. I know that while you sit in here wasting away, your children are out, living their lives, and grieving, and still going. And I know that you’re crumbling, and breaking, and shoving away everyone who cares about you because you think it will be easier if they’re not around to bother you in your misery.”

Bato laughed, harsh and biting and as cold as the icy ocean. “I know plenty of things, Hakoda. Not the least of them being that you are acting immature, and reckless, and hurtful, and horribly, idiotically selfish.”

Hakoda’s mouth dropped. He had been prepared. Or so he had thought. 

The thing about having a friend who has stood by you every day of your life is that they know exactly how to hurt you. They know where the jabs will ache, and where the punches will feel like bombs. They know where to stick in the knife and twist it around to drag out to most blood. 

Hakoda had been prepared for this. He had. 

But the one thing he would never have expected Bato to tell him, was that he was being selfish.

“Selfish?” Hakoda whispered. “Selfish?!” he repeated, his voice rising to a roar. 

“Yes!” Bato yelled right back. “Selfish!”

“I lost my _wife!”_ he roared. “I lost the first person I ever loved like that, the mother of my children, the person I wanted to grow old with. I’m here, and she’s gone, and I’m dealing with that how I can, and you are going to call me selfish?”

Bato’s eyes flared with fury. “Yeah,” he hissed. “I am.”

“I don’t know how to do this without her!” Hakoda yelled. And then he pulled back, his lips curling into an involuntary sneer. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.”

This time, it was Bato’s mouth that dropped open. He stood there for a second, obviously reeling. His expression reminded Hakoda, briefly, of a man in the middle of the ocean, a crack in his canoe and no oars to be found and no time. Sink or swim, and he was too busy aching to do either.

Bato let out a shaky breath, his air hissing between his teeth. 

“I can’t believe you.”  
Hakoda stopped, his mouth half open, preparing to yell. Bato was no longer yelling. His voice trembled as he spoke, his volume barely audible, think with something indistinguishable from drowning. But how could anyone breathe, through the haze of pain and loss drifting through the air between them?

“How can you be so blind?” Bato whispered. “I understand not being able to think about living without her, really, I do. But you’re right, Hakoda. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you can stand there and lash out and shove everyone away. I don’t understand how you could possibly have forgotten that she wasn’t just yours.”

“She was my wife! She-”

“You think what you’re feeling is special?” Bato hissed, the fury edging back into his voice. His shoulders fell, and his face crumpled, and though his eyes were still angry, he looked crushed.

“You aren’t the only one who loved her, Hakoda,” Bato said quietly. “We all lost as much as you did. Maybe you’ve forgotten, in the middle of you shredding your relationships and ruining what’s left of your family, but she was my best friend too. She was Kanna’s daughter-in-law, and she was Sokka and Katara’s mother. She was just as much to all of us as she was to you. So don’t you _ever_ try to imply that we don’t miss her like you do.”

Bato stared at him, his eyes hardening. “We all lost her, just like you did. The only difference is that we kept going, and you fell apart because you never tried for a second to do otherwise.”

Hakoda stared at him for a second, shock seeping in past the anger and the grief and the loss. And then, all at once, the weight of the past year seemed to fall onto his shoulders. The weight of ignoring Sokka and Katara, and falling into despondence and helplessness and something that might have been apathy if everything hadn’t hurt so much all the time.

All at once, the guilt slammed into his shoulders, and sunk into his bones, and everything ached. The weight of it all fell into him, no longer suspended above him by his family’s tired hands, and his legs weren’t strong enough to hold him up.

He slid to the floor, the tears rising unbidden before his knees even made contact. 

Immediately, Bato dropped down next to him. He took his hand, and didn’t try to stop Hakoda when he broke into hysterical sobs, and said nothing. He didn’t try to comfort Hakoda, and maybe that wasn’t anything Hakoda deserved anyway, but he was there. Because it was Bato, and if Bato was nothing else, he was there for the people he loved.

The light was beginning to dim outside the house by the time Hakoda’s sobs finally began to taper off into hiccups. The skin under Hakoda’s eyes felt tight, and his eyes itched, dry and aching, and his limbs felt as if the strength had been sucked right out of them.

When his throat finally unclogged enough for any noise to make it past his collarbones, he whispered, “I’ve really messed things up, haven’t I?”

Even as he winced at the scraping, raspy cadence of his voice, Bato didn’t react. “Yeah,” he said bluntly. “Yeah, you have.”

Hakoda almost snorted. Bato never had been one for sugarcoating.

Then, like the dark at the dawn, any humor left him, an awful thought occuring in his mind. “Do they hate me?” he asked quietly. 

Bato’s face fell and he swore under his breath. One of his hands swatted at Hakoda’s shoulder, his eyebrows pulling down into a scowl even as his face fell, like Hakoda’s words almost made him want to cry.

“Spirits, ‘Koda. No, you completely idiotic exuse of a functional human. They don’t hate you. If they hated you, she wouldn’t still be showing up every morning to get you up. I know she does.”

Hakoda closed his eyes, letting out a relieved breath. At least if everything else about his life had gone straight to hell, Sokka and Katara didn’t hate him. He took a second to thank the spirits that they didn’t. He wasn’t sure he would have been able to keep going at all if they did.

“You’re sure?” he asked weakly. 

Bato wasn’t one to lie, but Hakoda needed to know. He needed to know, without a shred of doubt.

Bato shook his head, seeming equal parts upset and angry. “No, ‘Koda. They don’t hate you. I don’t think they could, even if they wanted to.”

Hakoda nodded, a little shaky and a lot relieved. He sighed, weight settling heavy and cold into his limbs. “I’m sorry.”

Bato raised an eyebrow at him. “For what?” he asked. “Being a horrible friend, leaving me to parent your children, making me put up with your truly _awful_ jokes all these years-”

“For not trying,” Hakoda said. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Bato grinned. “Wow. Did that hurt to admit?”

Hakoda ignored him and plowed onwards. “I’ve been pushing you all away, and I haven’t actually been grieving in a healthy way. I’ve been a bad friend, and an even worse father, and all around a pretty sucky person to love, and I’m sorry.” 

Bato looked at him, carefully examining his expression. Hakoda was pretty sure he looked like a complete mess. It wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate. And he might not even have been shocked if Bato decided this broken, fracturing man wasn’t worth his time, and got up, and left, and never came back for him.

But Bato shook his head, and laughed, and dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Well, you should be sorry,” he said, a smile quirking at the edge of his lips. “You’ve been a dick.” Then he looked Hakoda in the eye, and smiled, bright and full and real this time. “I hope you plan to do better.”

“I do,” Hakoda said without hesitation. 

Bato nodded, grinning, all teeth and relief and exhaustion finally paying off. “Good,” he said. “And, ‘Koda?”

Hakoda raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t do this again. We’re here for you. We want to be here for you, and we will, if you let us. You aren’t in this alone.”

Hakoda closed his eyes against the tears stinging at them. But for the first time in almost a year, some shred of comfort dropped into his chest. Some emotion seeped into his cracking lungs and dripping viens. It wasn’t quite happiness. But it almost was, so it would be enough for now.

“Okay,” he said quietly. 

Hakoda took the words to heart. That night, he came out to dinner, and Katara was so shocked when she saw him she dropped soup all down her front. Then she groaned, and tried to pull it off with bending. Only a few drops came off confidently, the rest just shifting around a little, but Hakoda ruffled her hair and congratulated her, and she lit up like the rising moon.

Her smile looked shocked, like she hadn’t expected to even see him that night, much less see him behave like he used to again. Her smile still looked like Kya’s, and she couldn’t have been mistaken for anyone but her mother’s daughter. 

A part of Hakoda still wanted to turn away. Wanted to hide from his daughter’s smile, that would always remind a part of him what he had lost. But he didn’t. 

He smiled back at her, and when Sokka ran into the room, he swept both of them up into his arms, and Sokka looked as shocked as Katara, but then he smiled, too. 

It was then, with his giggling children tucked beneath his arms, that he realized something. 

The war that had claimed his wife, had taken his love, had ripped away his children’s innocence, hadn’t stopped. And it wouldn’t. Not until someone won it. 

And what happened if the Fire Nation won? 

They had come for the waterbenders of the South Pole even when the South Pole wasn’t involved in the war. What future would Katara have in a world where they won? What future _could_ she have, beyond the walls of a cell or harsh repression that Hakoda already knew she wouldn’t take well.

And Sokka. What about Sokka? What future would he have? He would never accept Katara’s oppression, much less her imprisonment. If nothing else, he was loyal to a fault, and he would never stand for his little sister being taken from him. What road would that lead him down? 

Hakoda knew the stories. The ones of the men and women gone mad with grief, lost in their own fury and drowning under the weight of everything that was gone from them. Would Sokka become one of them, in this world where the Fire Nation won?

“Daddy!” Katara wailed, kicking Sokka. “Tell Sokka to stop being stupid!”

“I’m not being stupid!” Sokka yelled back at her. “You’re wrong! Fish is way better than tigerseal. It’s not my fault your taste buds are wrong!” 

Katara let out a cry of mock rage, and dove at him, almost falling straight out of Hakoda’s arms. The result of it was Hakoda’s two children, wrestling while both still in his arms, rapidly devolving into furious laughter and raucous giggles. 

Hakoda’s hold on both of them tightened, and he let out a slow breath. “All right,” he said, pulling them apart. “That’s enough.”

“Awww, but Dad!” Sokka complained. “I was winning!”

“Liar!” Katara laughed. “The only thing you were doing was losing to my fingers!” She wiggled her fingers at him, grinning. 

Sokka pouted, folding his arms over his chest, and Hakoda tried not to laugh. Because really, Sokka was so ticklish. 

“Put me down!” Sokka cried, shoving at Hakoda’s shoulder. “I have to crush her!”

“Oh, good luck with that!” Katara shot back. 

Hakoda huffed out a slow breath, and leaned down, dropping both of his children on the ground. Instantly, Sokka let out a war cry, leaping at Katara. Katara grinned, laughing loud and brazen, and lunged right back at him. They met in the middle, flipping over and crashing to the ground, a mess of tangled limbs and brilliant laughter and shouting. 

Hakoda took in a shaky breath. He watched them roll over the ground, a blur of blue and white and their faces, alight with mock fury and echoing amusement and deafening love. Something heavy settled in his lungs. What future would they have in a world where the Fire Nation won? 

_None,_ his mind answered himself, and he knew it was right, and he knew it was coming, and he knew that he had to do anything he could to keep it from happening. 

When he explained his plan to Bato, Bato’s face stayed even and unwavering until after he had finished. Then he sighed, painful and grieving and resigned. Determined. 

Katara had always been like Bato, or maybe Bato had always been like Katara. Endlessly chasing after people they loved. Endlessly helping them, carrying them, loving them, even when they didn’t deserve it for a second. He never would have let Hakoda do it alone, even if it wouldn’t change anything. Even if they both knew there was a real chance they would both die doing this.

“You’re crazy,” Bato said, shaking his head.

“I have to,” Hakoda said. “If I don’t do everything I can to protect them, I’ll never forgive myself.”

Bato looked up at him, exasperated and resigned and oh-so very tired. “I know,” he said. “And I stand by what I said. You’re crazy. But spirit knows you’re going to need someone to be crazy with you, and it might as well be me.”

Hakoda stared at him for a second, stunned into motionlessness by his shock. He recovered, shaking his head. He wasn’t going to get anyone killed because of him. 

“Bato,” he said. “I didn’t say it so you would come with me. I said it so you would know what I’m doing.”

Bato gave him a flat glare. “Just because you didn’t say it so I would, doesn't mean I won’t.”

“I don’t want to get you killed, Bato.”

“And I don’t want you to die. Letting you go alone? That would be a pretty good way to let you die. If we go together, we can watch each other’s backs. That way both of us are less likely to die, and we’ll be more likely to make a difference.”

Hakoda looked at Bato. Bato stared back at him, his face calm and even, resigned and stubbornly determined. Katara had always been like Bato, or Bato had been like Katara. When either of them made up their mind, nothing else could sway them.

“I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?” Hakoda asked.

Bato gave him a close-lipped smile, his eyes tired and determined and flashing with the same stubborn care that they always had. “Do you plan on changing your mind?” he asked.

Hakoda let out a long breath, and it steamed in the air between them. “No.”

Bato bared a smile that looked more like a grimace, and Hakoda already knew the answer before he said, “Then, no. I won’t.”

And that was that. 

The decision to include the rest of the village’s men was less of a decision, and more of a, it just happened. 

Tanuk was the first man besides himself and Bato to join the mission. He found Bato and Hakoda working together on repairing one of the old ships from the sailing fleet that hadn’t been used in years. 

When he had found them, he had raised an eyebrow in a suspicious arch. Hakoda and Bato had been forced to explain, and they had sworn Tanuk to secrecy. 

Tanuk had looked at them, and then up at the ship. A peculiar expression crossed his face. Hakoda couldn’t quite untangle the emotions buried beneath his stony eyes. But he thought it looked something like longing. Something like rage. 

“Tanuk,” Hakoda asked. “It might be a year before we even consider being ready to leave. We just don’t want to tell anyone yet because we don’t want to start a panic. Can we trust you to keep this a secret?”

Tanuk’s eyes traced over the mast, and he stepped forward, running one hand down the frost-bitten side of the ship. Tanuk was probably the best sailor in the whole tribe. The water had always seemed more a part of him than anyone else. (But Katara was quickly coming for his title.)

Tanuk paused, his eyes hovering over the faded patterns on the stern, barely visible past the sheen of featherlike frost. He took an even breath, measured, calm. To sail the seas, you needed a level head. Humans could hesitate. Tides did not. So sailors had no time to, either.

“Yes,” Tanuk said quietly. “I will keep your secret.”

Hakoda and Bato let out a sigh of relief. 

Tanuk spun on his heel, facing them, his face perfectly neutral and calm. No hesitation. Sailors could not afford to hesitate. 

“On one condition.”

Hakoda and Bato paused, looking at each other. Tanuk was hardly one for blackmail. What could his condition possibly be?

“Take me with you.”

Hakoda just barely kept his mouth from dropping open. Bato seemed similarly shocked, but he recovered fast enough to say, “What?”

Tanuk fixed his gaze on Bato, eyes calm. “I would like to come. I cannot imagine you two have anything against me joining you.” A hint of a crooked smile broke through his calm façade. “I’ve seen the two of you out on the open sea.”

Bato winced. Hakoda was inclined to agree. That hadn’t gone well.

Hakoda stepped forward. “Why?”

Tanuk raised an eyebrow. “Why what?”

“Why do you want to come?”

Tanuk looked him up and down, his eyebrows furrowing, and for a split second, Hakoda felt disarmingly transparent. 

“Well,” Tanuk said slowly. “I imagine for the same reason you are.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile that was anything but happy. “It is for them, isn’t it?”

Hakoda let out a slow breath, and felt himself smile a little bit. Strange, how you could smile when everything was anything but amusing. Strange, that you could smile when there was so little to be happy about. 

Of course. He should have known. 

Tanuk’s little boy was only three now, but Hakoda remembered what it was like to have your whole world revolve around such a tiny person. He was doing this for Sokka and Katara, and Tanuk would be doing it for Kasiq. They really weren’t so different.

It was this that made Hakoda nod. “Yes,” he said. 

Tanuk grinned a little. “Yes what?” he asked. “Yes, that is why I’m doing it, or yes, you can come with us?”

“Both,” Hakoda said. He didn’t hesitate. He was going to be a sailor soon, and sailors couldn’t afford to hesitate. 

Tanuk’s face split into an even wider grin at this. “Good, he said decisively. “Because you’re fixing this boat all wrong.” He snatched the tigerseal-skin glue from Hakoda’s hands. “Let me show you how it’s done.”

One by one, the men of the village found out. And one by one, they joined the mission, with grim faces and solemn eyes. They would watch their wives, their sisters and children, brothers and fathers, and their faces would set into a heavy determination. 

They would fight, and some of them wouldn’t come back. But if it meant a better world for their families, then it would be worth it.

They decided, pretty early on, that the women would not go. Not because they couldn’t fight, but because they were the only thing holding the community together. If the men left, life would go on. If the women left, the Southern Water Tribe would crumble into obscurity. 

Hakoda got into the habit of waking up before either of his children to go out and work. He would eat breakfast by the fire he stoked back to life, and most mornings he would slide into the doorway of Sokka and Katara’s shared room. 

Easily half of the nights, one of their beds would be empty, and both of them would be curled up together in the same bed, limbs tangled and snoring lightly. 

Sometimes, Hakoda wondered when that had happened. Sokka and Katara had never been stingy with physical affection before, but now they seemed to live and breathe each other’s presence. Hakoda wondered when that had started. He wondered why he hadn’t been there to see it. 

He swallowed down the ache in his chest and the lump in his throat, kissed their foreheads, and left. 

When he got to the fleet, he was greeted by a chorus of calls from the other men, and he couldn’t help but think of Katara shaking him awake with tiny fingers and a gentle voice, and rolling away from her. He forced a smile onto his face and called back an echo of their greeting. 

And when Bato looked at him with narrowed eyes, he forced a smile, and watched his friend’s eyes crumble, and ignored the echoes within his own chest, the crumbling icebergs and melting glaciers and roaring tidal waves, because sailors couldn’t hesitate.

More and more men kept joining the mission, and the number of boats they would need kept climbing. More men meant more safety, yes. But it also meant more repairs, more food to prepare, more supplies to pack, more training to occur. 

Hakoda wasn’t opposed to backup. In fact, it was probably even better for them to have more men on the mission. But it meant that the timetable kept getting pushed back.

It was a bit of a double-edged sword, the extended stay before leaving. 

Because on one hand, Hakoda wanted to be out helping. Every day they stayed behind was another day they weren’t helping to end the war, another day that Sokka and Katara’s not-a-future future crept closer. 

But on the other hand, rare as it was that they finished early, he was spending time with Sokka and Katara and his mother. 

Sokka had decided to get serious with his boomerang. He was getting better with it, and his awful jokes made Hakoda snort water out of his nose sometimes, but he always looked so proud that he had made him laugh, so Hakoda could never find it in him to regret his burning nose. 

Katara, when she wasn’t working, was practicing her waterbending, and routinely demonstrated her skills by destroying Sokka in snowball fights that were not entirely fair, even when Hakoda was helping Sokka. 

Kanna, Hakoda was pretty sure, had an inkling of what the men were up to. She had been there the last time the men went off to war. Hell, she had even taken part herself. She still told stories at night with the older women about the siege of Kinak Jouel, the Fire Nation’s main foothold in the South. 

If her knowing eyes were anything to judge by, she knew the way he hovered above his children, watching them like he would never get another chance.

The thing about when something keeps getting delayed is that eventually you almost forget that someday it won’t be delayed for much longer. 

It was a day in late spring two years after his resolution to make change that Tanuk came out of the last boat, a tight smile on his face that didn’t look happy at all, and said, “That’s it.”

Bato raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

Tanuk nodded, dropping his poor attempt at a smile altogether. “That’s it. These boats are as repaired as we can get them without new wood.”

Hakoda’s throat clogged up, the significance of it hitting him like a snowbank falling onto his head. “We’re ready to go,” he asked hollowly, aware that it didn’t sound like much of a question. 

Tanuk nodded anyway. “I have to advise leaving next week,” he said, just as hollowly. “Going north the currents will be faster if they are warm, and we will reach the shore of the southern Earth Kingdom within two weeks if we are traveling in the height of summer.”

Hakoda took in a shaky breath. _For Sokka and Katara._ He steeled himself, and nodded at Tanuk and Bato. “Tell the men. We leave in six days.”

The men looked a little stunned to learn they were leaving so soon. Hakoda had to assume that they, like him, had almost forgotten that this would actually happen. But then they turned hard and determined. None of them had forgotten _why_ they were doing this. They were ready to defend their home.

Three days later, Hakoda stood in the main tent of the village, the men of the village beside him and chin held high, and he watched as the women shouted and yelled and broke down around them. He understood. He wouldn’t have ever wanted to be alone either.

He stood in front of the village, trying to maintain order. He looked back to see what was left of his broken family. 

Kanna looked resigned, like she had seen in coming and already accepted it. But Katara and Sokka’s eyes were wide, their faces shocked. Sokka’s mouth was hanging open, and Katara looked horrified, and both of them looked seconds away from tears. Between them hung their intertwined hands, and they were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, clinging to each other like life rafts. 

Hakoda turned away, eyes stinging, and went back to trying to assuage Yamika’s frantic protestations. He didn’t look back at them, his children trying desperately to stay afloat. If he did, he would crumble into rubble on the floor, and he couldn’t do that. Not here. Not now.

It took almost an hour, but eventually the women accepted that the men were going, and began to make plans for how to survive while they were gone. 

For the next three days, the men and women worked side-by-side to pack the ships. 

On the third day, silence fell with the last of the supplies. As one, families peeled off to go back to their houses. To spend one last night together. 

Dinner in their igloo was a quiet affair, the four of them just soaking up each other’s company. Hakoda wondered, silently, if he would ever get to do this again. He didn’t know. But he didn’t think it would have been any easier even if he did.

About thirty minutes after he retired to bed, and nowhere near sleep, Sokka and Katara came into the room. Hakoda had been staring up at the ceiling in the dark, wondering and aching and wishing for more time. Then there were whispered arguments, and a second later, his children came into his room, dragging their blankets with them. 

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked at them. Katara looked back, meeting his eyes with all her stubbornness. “Can we sleep in here?” she said quietly. “Just… Just for tonight.”

Something in Hakoda’s chest flipped at the unsaid, _We won’t need to again. Because you won’t be here._

“Of course,” he said quietly, just managing to choke it out past the lump in his throat. 

Katara climbed in, throwing her blankets over them, and gestured Sokka up in after her. Sokka climbed in more hesitantly, but he settled against Hakoda’s other side all the same. 

Hakoda slipped back down, and both of his children settled in next to him, curling into his side for what he hated to think might be the last time. And if muffled sniffling came from either side, and spots on his clothes got suspiciously more damp than they should, and if he bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut to banish the tears that rose unbidden behind his eyelids, none of them said anything about it.

The morning was even more sober than the past night, breakfast passing in a kind of gray-tinged haze. 

When Katara served him, she didn’t look him in the face. Hakoda wondered if it was that she couldn’t, or if she was trying to get used to not seeing his face so it wouldn’t hurt so much. He realized he didn’t want to know. 

The men met up by the fleet of boats, hard eyes and flat mouths and already dripping loss. It ached.

They were almost done getting ready to leave when Sokka came staggering up in a face full of warpaint. Something in Hakoda’s chest broke at the sight, but he tried to push Sokka away gently. 

“Being a man is knowing where you’re needed the most,” Hakoda told him. “And right now that’s here, protecting your sister.”

Sokka stared up at him with wide eyes. “I don’t understand,” he said tremulously, and he looked so young.

Hakoda’s chest tightened. This, he reminded himself, was why he was doing it. This was why he was leaving. To protect them. To give them a future where they could be free, or die trying. He might never see them again, but even if he didn’t, he would die knowing he had done all he could for them.

“Someday you will.”

Sokka’s face screwed up, tears welling up in his eyes, and he threw himself into Hakoda’s arms. 

Hakoda tightened his arms around Sokka, trying to memorize the imprint of half of his world between his arms. “I will miss you so much,” he whispered, jagged and rough with emotion.

Sokka walked back. Hakoda watched as he sat in the snow, and Katara helped him wipe away the makeup, pressing a kiss on his forehead as she did.

Hakoda hugged Katara like he had hugged Sokka, trying to memorize the other half of his world, pressed between his arms.

Tanuk took the lead in the largest boat, guiding the fleet out onto the westbound current and away from Hakoda’s whole world. 

There was an old legend in their tribe that said that when soldiers left, they should not look back. It was considered a call to the spirits that their business was not yet finished, a plea to the world to let them return to the ones that they loved. 

Hakoda stood on a ship on a westbound current, and he faced out towards the sea, and he did not look back. 

(He didn’t see his children, standing on the shore, watching yet another parent be claimed by the world that had never stopped for them. He didn’t see his children, holding each other afloat in the middle of a sea of absence, drowning in despair and loss and grief from yet another person gone. It was probably better that way.)

The fleet reached the Southern Earth Kingdom roughly two weeks later, true to Tanuk’s estimate. They landed on an island called Powika, one of the many off the coast. And were promptly attacked by the Earth Kingdom troops stationed there. 

One very loud and confusing battle later, the Earth Kingdom troops seemed to realize that, actually, the people wearing blue and white were _not_ Fire Nation. What a shock.

When asked who the leader was, everyone in the tribe had pointed at Hakoda. He had stepped forward, and looked the general in the eye. 

The general was tall, even taller than Hakoda, and riddled with excessively huge muscles covered in gleaming armor. Overall, it just seemed like an unnecessary display of power.

Still. Hakoda raised himself to his tallest height and looked the general in the eye, loudly declaring, “I am Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe. And we would like to assist the armies of the Earth Kingdom in their fight.”

\----

Hakoda let out a measured breath through his nose, resisting the urge to rub his temples and groan loudly.

Beside him, Hei Min gave him a sympathetic look from the corner of her eye before snapping back to attention. 

Almost two years of fighting with the Earth Kingdom, and the Water Tribe warriors were finally getting somewhere. 

When they had started out, the Earth Kingdom officials had sighed at their fleet numbers, rolled their eyes, and one of them, Uweong, had said, “If you wish, Chief, you can accompany my fleet.” 

One of the others had snorted under their breath and said, “Sure. Why not. Let the underdogs have the newbies.” That particular comment had started a whole row of snickers around the room. 

Well. Hakoda was fairly certain that particular officer would eat his words now. 

The Southern Warriors had quickly proven themselves. It had evidently been a long time since any Fire Nation soldiers had fought Water Tribe this far south, because they had no clue how to stop them. And the Water Tribe ships’ design had been recently copied by an Earth Kingdom commander to make another fleet like it. 

Earth Kingdom ships were large, often bargelike, with deep flat bellies, designed to ride low in the water along smooth lakes and rivers. Fire Nation ships were huge, hulking and, Hakoda thought, incredibly clumsy. Certainly they could maintain speed well enough once they gained it, but until they did, they just lumbered along, turning slowly and moving slowly, and counting on no one being able to break through the thick metal walls. 

But Water Tribe ships were light, designed to cut through rough seas and passages between glaciers, and they could outstrip any other boat Hakoda had seen in terms of immediate speed and turning capabilities. Plus, apparently the Fire Nation had gotten used to no one being able to catch up with them and get in close range, because they were entirely unprepared for the Southern Tribe’s style of pulling their boat up next to them, and boarding the ship to wreak havoc. 

Uweong, when he had first taken them into his fleet, had been something of a disgrace among the Earth Kingdom captains. Apparently he had lost the mouth of an important bay, allowing the Fire Nation to gain a foothold in the south, and no one had ever forgiven him. 

Thus, his ships were poorly made, his crews assembled of those who were disliked most among the other fleets. 

But that was before the Southern Water Tribe joined the war. 

The addition of their fast ships and recklessly inventive crew had quickly tipped the tide in Umeong’s favor. A year and half after they joined, Umeong’s fleet, along with Hakoda’s, had managed to reclaim several important trade posts as well as capture more than a few Fire Nation ships. 

Their underdog fleet had quickly regained favor and respect. As recently as three months ago, Umeong had been promoted.

Which was great for Umeong. Hakoda was happy for him. Really, he was. 

Umeong had become something of a friend, and despite his initial reputation, he was actually a very good leader, with a well-trained mind that got along with Hakoda’s ideas fantastically.

Unfortunately, Umeong’s promotion meant that another captain had to take his place. 

And if Captain Cheon Te suggested one more idea as stupid as charging the new fleet head on, Hakoda might have to murder him. 

His only consolation was Hei Min. 

The earthbender woman was one of the sergeants under Cheon Te’s command, her squad exclusively made up of unassuming but altogether terrifying earthbenders. 

Honestly, Hakoda thought it was stupid that Hei Min was the subordinate when she was obviously far better at what they were doing. But there was nothing Hakoda could do about that when the only women allowed to join the army were bender. And even then they never gained much prestige, no matter how much better than the men they served with they were. 

Hei Min’s authority was limited, but she did have Cheon Te’s ear after serving with him and proving her worth in many skirmishes, and most of the time she could make him listen to Hakoda. Or at least listen to reason.

But now, unfortunately, did not seem like one of those times. 

“Captain,” Hakoda said, just barely managing to keep from grinding his teeth. “I must advise against this course of action. The Fire Nation fleet far outnumbers us, and in a narrow river like the Hou Jeong they could choke us out easily.”

Cheon Te raised his chin, staring down his narrow nose at Hakoda. “I know that you are laboring under impressions of false importance and influence, but you cannot tell me what to do with _my_ fleets.”

Hei Min managed to keep from sighing, but Hakoda could see the struggle from here. Or maybe she was trying not to scream. The two expressions were not so different.

“Sir,” Hei Min said in her voice for attempting to pacify her commander’s bruised pride. “The Fire Navy ships are more fortified, have more ammunition, and outnumber us three to one. And even if they did not, they have already taken the mouth of the river where it spills out into Bleeding Hawk Bay. They could hold us in even if they had only four ships. It is just not wise to attempt a charge-”

“Sergeant,” Cheon Te said angrily, inflating dangerously. “You are in no position to instruct me.”

This time, the sigh was already half out of Hei Min’s mouth before she managed to stop it. “Not instructing, sir, simply advising.”

“Well, advise someone else. I do not need you to hover over me like a wife.”

Hei Min’s nose wrinkled, her eyes flashing with something like rage. Hakoda was sure that it was taking all her self control not to crush Cheon Te’s skull like a particularly annoying bug, but Hakoda had to give it to her. She was very good at hiding it. 

Cheon Te inflated self importantly. “Sergeant, tell the men that we leave at first dawn. We will be going downstream to take Bleeding Hawk Bay.”

Hei Min gritted her teeth, and her hands closed into fists, but she said, “Of course, Sir,” in a perfectly even voice. “I will inform the troops.”

She spun on her heel and marched out with as much dignity as she could. Or as much not punching anything as she could.

Hakoda gave Cheon Te a stiff nod, and followed her out. 

He opened the flap of the tent and walked out to come face-to-face with Hei Min, turning the air blue with a rather impressive string of curse words, and Bato looking at her, both impressed and slightly resigned. 

Bato turned to look at Hakoda when he came out, his lips flattening. “I take it it didn’t go well?”

Hei Min finally stopped swearing, her chest heaving, and spun around, her eyes full of so much rage that both of them took a step back. “He’s a fool,” she snarled. “And he’s going to get us all killed.”

Bato glanced at the tent. “Should we maybe… take this somewhere else?” he said lightly. 

Hakoda glanced back at the tent, wincing. If Cheon Te had heard Hei Min, it would mean her instant demotion for disrespect. And they couldn’t afford that. He jerked his head at the path behind the tent. 

Hei Min huffed, shooting one last venomous glare at the dull green tent, and following them back, the ground shaking under her rage with each step. 

The three of them wove their way back into the camp. As they walked, soldiers from all the tents shouted at Hei Min, waving and calling her over. Hakoda watched as some of the tenseness in Hei Min’s shoulders eased, her calling back greetings and occasionally knocking soldiers over with well-placed stomps that left them laughing. 

Hakoda wondered how she did it sometimes. Easing everyone else's nerves and simultaneously doing the responsibilities of a captain without the recognition, title, or security for retirement. It would have driven him crazy. 

When they reached the section of camp where the Water Tribe warriors congregated, Hakoda and Bato began to receive more calls in greeting, but Hei Min still received her fair share. She had been fighting with them since they joined, and she had saved most of their skins at least once during battle, whether directly or indirectly. 

The three of them slipped into Bato’s tent, and Hei Min promptly dropped to the ground, cross legged. She dug her fingers into the dirt, and the ground beneath it shuddered as the tension entered her shoulders again. 

“He’s going to get us all killed,” she hissed. “If he would just stop to listen to us for once, swallow his presumed self-importance for one _spirits-damned second…_ ” 

Bato sighed. “What is he doing now?”

Hakoda gritted his teeth and forced himself to not shout. “The Captain,” he said slowly, “has decided, despite our advice, that our fleet should continue up the Hou Jeong River to attempt to take Bleeding Hawk Bay.”

Bato blinked at them. “You… You’re kidding, right? This is a really mean joke.”

Hei Min dug her fingers deeper into the ground, the foundations shuddering beneath them, her face shuttering like a closed window.

Bato’s eyes widened. “You aren’t joking,” he said, dread creeping into his normally even voice. 

“Unfortunately not,” Hakoda said. 

Hei Min’s face crumbled, and she pulled her dust-coated fingers from the ground to yank them through her hair. She groaned, despairing and gut-wrenching. 

“How am I going to do this?” she whispered. “How can I send them into this battle knowing they’ll die?”

Bato frowned, and he slid over to her, dropping a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You don’t know that,” he said slowly, but it sounded as if he couldn’t even convince himself long enough to convince her. 

Hei Min started laughing hysterically. “Oh yes I do,” she said. “There are at least three fleets stationed in Bleeding Hawk Bay because they’re going to move on Yuen Se soon. Even if we make it down the river, which we _won’t,_ because they have forts constructed along the sides with catapults, we’ll never take the bay. I’ve seen the bay when I was little. One well positioned boat with a few good catapults might be able to hold the mouth. Three fleets? Forget it. We’re doomed.”

Hakoda frowned. And then it hit him. He might not have thought of it without Hei Min’s words, but it might just work. 

“I’ve got it.” 

Both Bato and Hei Min looked up at him. They knew that voice. It was his, _I’ve got a bonkers idea that might work if only because no one would ever think we would be crazy enough to do it_ voice. That voice had won them fights they shouldn’t have won, and by now both of them knew it was worth listening to.

“Well?” Bato asked.

Hakoda pushed himself to his feet, darting over to the small table in the corner and snatching Bato’s map of the area off it, immediately running back. 

He dropped onto the ground in front of them, spreading it out over the dirt. He dropped his finger onto the spot that marked where they were camped at the entrance of Hou Jeong River, tracing it down to where Bleeding Hawk Bay was marked in red ink. Along the river were dots of ink marked in angry red. The forts that Hei Min had mentioned. 

“It’s what you said,” Hakoda said, looking at Hei Min. “One good ship can hold the mouth of the bay, but the problem with getting to the bay is the forts on the side.” He grinned in the way that made Kya compare him to a wolf. “Forts with catapults.”

Bato shot up, lighting up like a firecracker. “We’re going to take the forts?”

Hakoda grinned. “Send in small teams to slip in past the walls and let others in. And once we take control of the forts, we have-”

“A set of very nice catapults,” Hei Min said, catching on. “Probably already stocked with pitch.”

“And with an excellent range,” Hakoda finished. “Probably enough to hit any ships defending the mouth of the bay.”

Something like hope entered Hei Min’s face. Then it dimmed. 

“Where will we get the men though? Even if the might of force will be on the river, taking the forts won’t be a small task.”

Hakoda and Bato exchanged glances. “Hei Min,” Hakoda said slowly, rolling out the words.

Hei Min’s eyes narrowed. “Great spirits,” she sighed. “What crazy thing are you going to ask me to do now?”

Bato looked back at her, smiling apologetically. “Exactly how down would you be for borderline malicious defiance of your superior officer?”

Hei Min looked at him, her face completely blank. Then she sighed. “Well,” she said. “If we don’t take those forts, hundreds of soldiers will die.” Her eyes narrowed, her resolve hardening before Hakoda’s eyes. “I think my mens’ lives might be worth a few lies.” 

She raised an eyebrow at Hakoda. “So what exactly is it that you want me to do?”

\--

Hei Min strode out of Cheon Te’s tent, her chin high and eyes flashing. Hakoda, Bato, and Imetu, another earthbender and Hei Min’s unofficial second-in-command, shot to their feet, halfhearted card game forgotten. 

“Well?” Imetu exclaimed. 

Hei Min looked at him blank-faced for a second, and then started laughing. She doubled over, clutching her knees and cackling with something Hakoda recognized as rollover terror. 

In lieu of actually answering, she wheezed, “Oh spirits. I can’t believe that actually worked.”

“It worked?” Bato exclaimed.

Hei Min straightened, clenching her shaking fists and still laughing. “I put on my _please don’t ignore me, I have paperwork for you_ voice, drawled a lot of tiny facts about it that made it seem like just minutiae about his plan, and asked him for command of some of the squads to take the forts, and he said yes.”

“No way,” Imetu breathed, his face awed. 

Hei Min grinned. “Without even looking up from his maps.”

Hakoda took a second to revel in the glow of victory. Sure, it had mostly been Hei Min, but it had been his idea. And it worked!

Then Bato said, “So we’ll have enough to take the forts?” and Hakoda was plunged back into his reality, of battles and wars and never resting. Never hesitating. 

Hei Min nodded, more confidently this time. “We should,” she said. “The forts rely mostly on their structure to keep them safe. The fighters we have to worry about are in the navy, but we won’t be going hand-to-hand with them. The biggest challenge will be getting past the metal wall, since we can’t bend it.” Then she grinned at him. “But even metal breaks if you hit it with enough stones.”

Despite himself, Hakoda laughed. 

“What squads did you ask for command of?” Imetu asked. 

“The fourteenth, the nineteenth, four, five, and six, the twenty-second, and the thirty-first. And mine, of course.”

Hakoda mentally ran over the squads in his head. The fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-second, and Hei Min’s own twelfth were all talented earthbender units, prided for their dedication not to brute strength, but to careful, vicious hits that tore through defenses. But four, five, six, and thirty-one were nonbender units that had proven their talents at taking fortresses. Six specifically was renowned for its soldiers that could scale walls without ladders or ropes. 

Hakoda took a second to thank the spirits that placed Hei Min on the earth. If anyone could take these forts on such a short timespan, it was the team she had put together. 

Bato seemed to have reached the same conclusion he had, because he looked at Hei Min and said fervently, “You’re amazing.”

Hei Min grinned back at him. “I know.” Then she clapped her hands together, a dangerous light entering her eyes, her grin widening even further. “Shall we go tell the men?”

\--

Hakoda’s plan relied on darkness. It relied on the shadows and the slanted lighting of the torches the forts used. So midnight found their ships slipping out onto the river as silently as they could, heading downstream towards the forts and their reckless plan.

Hei Min had given instructions earlier, leaving Imetu in charge of all the other squads at the camp. As she had given her orders, the men watched her, deferential and far more respectful than they were for Cheon Te, and Hakoda wondered for the millionth time why she wasn’t the captain instead of that moron.

Hakoda slipped up to Tanuk, who was steering the boat, and pointed at Hei Min’s boat. “Can you get us up there? I want to talk to her.”

Tanuk nodded, already knowing who _her_ was. “Don’t get distracted,” he said with a teasing grin.

Hakoda rolled his eyes, shoving Tanuk away and ignoring Bato’s snort behind him. Hei Min was more of a sister to him than anything, and even if she weren’t, everyone could see that there was _something_ going on between her and the sergeant of the forty-second squad.

Tanuk pulled the boat up to Hei Min’s carefully. A few soldiers from both boats came up to grab the edge, holding it steady. Hakoda and Bato jumped up, nodding to the other soldiers, who nodded back and released the Water Tribe boat once they were in.

Hakoda strolled over the deck, Bato trailing after him, weaving through soldiers that murmured hellos or thumped them on the shoulders. He walked over to the helm. 

Hei Min stood by the bow, staring out over the dark water, her shoulders set in a line that was very pointedly not tense, which is to say that it was very tense, but in a way that meant she was trying very hard to make it not so. 

Hakoda knew how that went. It was the tenseness that came with knowing friends might die soon from your own choices. The best captains, Hakoda had found, were the ones that cared. The best captains, Hakoda had found, were ironically the ones that crumbled eventually, because they couldn’t handle all the blood on their hands. He almost wished Hei Min wasn’t one. Almost.

Hakoda reached her side first, Bato only seconds behind him. She looked up, meeting their eyes in turn and giving them a tense nod before turning back to the river.

“Hey,” Hakoda said softly. “Are you okay?”

Hei Min let out a slow breath through her barely-parted lips, eyes fixed on the bank in the horizon. “I have just staked the lives of half a dozen units on a half-baked scheme we took all of three minutes to make, and if it fails, our whole fleet will die in a useless charge up a river that was doomed from the start. I am not okay. None of us, none of _any of this_ ,” she hissed, throwing her arms up in the air and gesturing at nothing, everything, “is okay.”

Her head swiveled so she could glare at him. “And, to be clear, if this plan of yours gets all of us killed, I will castrate you myself.”

Hakoda recoiled, eyes widening. Bato whistled lowly. “Hear that, ‘Koda?” he said teasingly. “Your balls are on the line.”

Hei Min fixed Bato with a flat look that cut deeper than a knife. “There’s a lot more than Hakoda’s balls on the line,” she said coldly.

Bato and Hakoda winced. This was the one thing about Hei Min that they had never gotten used to. She was so kind and gentle most of the time, they always forgot that before battles she got cold, icy and cutting as a glacier and unyielding as the earth she bent. 

The Water Tribe warriors always got aggressively cheerful before battle. It took their minds off of it all. But Hei Min was approaching twenty-six now, and she had enlisted at seventeen. She had been doing this for almost five times as long as they had, and Hakoda thought that maybe she had gotten tired of it. You could only wash blood from your limbs. Never your mind.

“Are we ready?” Bato asked quietly, more somber this time. 

Hei Min gave him a stiff nod. “As ready as we can be,” she said. 

“Then we’ve done all we can do,” he said softly. “What will be now will be, and there is no sense in worrying.”

Hei Min huffed, rolling her eyes. “You sound like my grandmother,” she grumbled. But the edge of her mouth quirked up a little, so Hakoda counted it as a win.

Then a soldier behind them yelled quietly, “Sir! We’ve spotted the first fort!” 

Hei Min’s spine straightened, a deadly edge entering her eyes. This was no soft friend anymore, but a seasoned, dangerous soldier. She looked at Hakoda and Bato and her voice was all commander now. 

“Get back to your boat,” she said firmly. “We’ll hit the bank in five minutes, and you need to be with your soldiers.”

Hakoda nodded. He extended his arm, and Hei Min took it in Water Tribe fashion. “Take care of yourself,” he said seriously. 

“We’ll see you inside,” Bato said, taking Hei Min’s forearm. 

Hei Min nodded at them both, and turned back to her men.

Barely a minute later, Tanuk pulled the boat up to Hei Min’s, and Hakoda and Bato jumped back in together. 

The men raced around on the boat, hushed arguments and horrible whispered jokes and wheezed laughter and the tenseness that always came with the knowledge that some of these faces might never be here again. 

Hakoda looked over at Bato, and found his eyes already on him. Hakoda grinned, forced and painful. “Bet I’ll take more men than you.”

Bato snorted, and it sounded less forced than Hakoda’s. But Bato had always been better at hiding things than him. 

“You’re crazy,” Bato shot back. “I’m going to crush you.”

Hakoda grinned. “Bring it on.”

“Hey,” Tanuk hissed at him from the rudder. “Get into position you two. We’ve got maybe half a minute till we hit bank, and if you two fall overboard, it isn’t on me.”

Hakoda and Bato exchanged grins, dropping into crouches braced for landing. 

Twenty seconds. And then the boat hit the bank with a screech and a jerk. The warriors lurched to their feet, a wave of motion across the deck, leaping over the side to the ground. Across from them, Hakoda could see Hei Min’s ship land, and a distinct series of blurs. Soldiers, leaping to the ground.

Hakoda gripped his knife, and two separate imprints of his world echoed like ghosts in his arms. 

Together, Hakoda and Bato charged into battle side-by-side. It would be the last time for months.

\--

All told, the battle had been going fairly well. 

Hei Min’s unit was particularly skilled at tunneling. 

It wasn’t terrifying. Hakoda was absolutely not terrified by the fact that Hei Min could pop out of seemingly nowhere, stab high-ranking officers surrounded by soldiers, and vanish as quickly as she had come. It wasn’t at all the most horrifying piece of bending Hakoda had ever witnessed. 

Okay, so maybe tunneling was the most disturbing thing he had ever seen, but it was what it was, and what it was was damn useful. 

It took exactly three minutes and five tunneling earthbenders to break into the fort and take control of the gate levers. By the time the Water Tribe warriors were already charging into the fort, an alarm hadn’t even been sounded. 

As Hei Min had predicted, the fort had plenty of soldiers. But they weren’t skilled enough to fight off the Water Tribe warriors unprepared, and all in all it only took thirty minutes to secure the fort, cuff the soldiers, and lock them in the fort’s cells together. 

They had been prepared to take the fort.

They had not been prepared for the unit of firebenders they came across on their way back to the boats. 

The Water Tribe warriors had been charging through the forest, generally being loud and obnoxious and very very noticeable in the glow of their victory. And they had charged headfirst into a clearing full of a unit dressed in Fire Nation red.

For a handful of seconds, the two factions had simply stared at each other, both quite clearly shocked to run into each other. Though Hakoda supposed that the Fire Nation soldiers deserved their shock a bit more, considering they were supposed to be in Fire Nation occupied space. 

Then one of the red-dressed soldiers cursed and drew their sword, diving headfirst at the Water Tribe warriors. 

Upeqi just barely managed to bring his knife up fast enough to deflect it. And then a cry rose up from both sides as one, and all of them charged. 

Hakoda’s soldiers were just pulling out their knives when a soldier along the front barked a command in the Fire Nation tongue in a surprisingly high voice, and fell into a stance Hakoda recognized just in time. 

“GET BACK!” he roared at his soldiers, a split second before the soldier threw their bare hands out in front of them, and a roaring torrent of yellow flames sprayed from their palms. 

The flames hit the ground, instantly seizing onto the fallen leaves and igniting, leaving a barrier of fire between the two factions.

The soldier that had cast the flames shouted again, “ _Ivaif oshao! Jenhingyai teki!_ ” The soldiers fanned out, drawing swords or raising their hands, fire growing between them, and Hakoda realized that the soldier that had spoken was the leader. 

He drew his bone blade and yelled to his own soldiers, “Wait for them to come to us! Drive them back if you can, and away from the boats. We have to get back on the river.” 

His soldiers shouted in understanding. 

Barely a second later, the flames before him split, and the soldier that had spoken dove through, hands already reaching for his wrists. 

Hakoda twisted, swinging his knife in a vicious arc at his wrist, hard enough that it would slice straight to bone if the hit landed. It didn’t. 

The soldier twisted his arm in midair, hooking his hand under the knife and grabbing the blunt edge of it. He swung his other hand at Hakoda’s face, and Hakoda just barely ducked under the stream of flames. 

The heat seared at the back of his neck, and he knew that there would be blisters there tomorrow. He lunged in, elbowing the soldier hard in the gut and yanking his knife from his grip when he stumbled back.

But the soldier let out a string of curse words, and it sounded suspiciously feminine. Suspiciously young. 

He was fighting a woman. He tried not to be shocked. 

It wasn’t terribly hard. He was a little busy trying not to die by his- _her_ hand. 

Whether or not she was a woman, she was a terrifying fighter, and despite the fact that Hakoda easily had a foot-and-a-half on her height wise, he found himself staggering back under the viciousness of her assault. 

It was obvious that she had realized he was the leader of his soldiers, and that she knew he knew she led hers. It was a battle to turn the tide. 

He dove out of the way of a burst of flames, but it still grazed his arm, leaving what was sure to be a nasty burn later. He lunged at her, and she deflected his knife with her wrist guard and staggered back, affording him the first ground he had gained in several minutes. 

She swung a hand horizontally into his throat, and when he choked, she spun her wrist, dislodging his knife and jumping, landing a nasty kick in his gut. 

Hakoda let himself fall. He hit the ground and rolled, catching her ankle and yanking her down. He flipped over her, seized her shoulders, and threw her backwards over him. 

She hit the ground with a yelp, and Hakoda spun around, knife extended. Something smacked against his ankle, and he glanced down at it, realizing her helmet had come off when she hit the ground.

She rolled onto her knee, hands extended, and her head snapped up as he lunged at her. Her hand came up, seizing his wrist, knocking it to the side and twisting it in one motion. 

For a split second, their faces were just inches from one another. 

Hakoda stared at her, wide-eyed and shocked. And the face of a child looked back. 

Her face was angular in the way most Fire Nation faces were, her chin sharp and cheekbones high and eyes a fiery amber. But there was baby fat still on her cheeks, and she couldn’t have been more than fourteen. _Katara’s age,_ he thought, shock and horror taking hold. 

The girl (because she was a girl, not a woman. Too young.) snarled, and lunged. Her elbow smashed into his neck, and her shoulder met his with a vengeance, and when they came down her arm was pressing into his neck, her feet pinning his wrists to the ground. His knife had fallen to the ground somewhere beyond his grip, and he couldn’t bring himself to wish he had it. He couldn’t kill a child. 

She looked up and away from him, hair falling free of her topknot in sweaty strands around her face, and spirits, she was so damn _young._ What was a child doing in war armor?

Something shifted in her eyes, looking out over the flames and the shouting from where their soldiers were still battling. She had won. Why wasn’t she finishing it? 

She looked down at him, her eyes catching on his. Her hand shifted above him, flames curling around her fingers. Hakoda met her eyes. _Make it quick,_ he prayed. 

Something flashed in her eyes, sparking to life and dying all at once, and Hakoda had a sudden, inexplicable feeling that _something_ had just changed, no matter what that something was, or how small.

She looked up and yelled, “Retreat!” She leapt off of him, looking out over the flames for her soldiers. “Retreat!” she roared again. 

She glanced back down at him, and he met her eyes, stunned. She stared back, expression unreadable. And then she turned, and ran, and she was gone, only the burn on Hakoda’s arm and his shock as proof she had ever been there. 

The girl, regardless of her youth, had an impressive yell, and within seconds her soldiers were pulling back, fleeing into the woods after her. One of them stopped, shoving the last few others past them, and swinging their hands out in a wide arc to spray red flames across the ground behind them, presumably to cover their retreat. And then they were racing back to the shore of the river and the bay, and only the smoke and the flames were left behind. 

Hakoda staggered to his feet, clutching at his raw throat and staring, wide-eyed, into their wake. 

And then he heard the shouting. 

\--

Bato’s burn stretched from his collarbone all the way down to just above his hip, and curled over what was to him his whole left arm, inflamed red skin pulled tight and bleeding no matter how much salve the medics slathered over it. He could barely lift his arm so that his wrist came level with his shoulder.

Bato was the one to lay out the cold, hard truth of it perhaps a week and a half after the skirmish. “You have to leave me behind,” he had said, in his tone of voice that meant he would be leaving no room for argument. “I can’t fight, and you all have to keep going. I’ll be alright. You have to go. I’m telling you to go.”

Hei Min cursed and swore and pursed her lips in the way that meant she was trying very hard not to cry when Bato said it.

Hakoda had swallowed tears and gritted his teeth and nodded, saying roughly, “We’ll send you maps. So that when you’re ready, you can find us.” 

Bato had smiled softly, and said, “I would expect nothing less.”

They had left Bato behind in the newly recaptured Bleeding Hawk Bay. Hei Min had been promptly promoted to Captain, the third-ever woman to receive a true commanding rank in the Earth Kingdom army. And within a month, her unit had been reassigned.

She delivered the news to Hakoda herself, her lower lip shaking and her voice flat in the way it was only when she was trying very hard not to cry.

Her unit had been reassigned to go to the western front, where she would be meeting up with a group of other units in an attempt to regain some footing along the upper western coast. 

When Hakoda had asked her, quietly, if she absolutely had to go, her lower lip had trembled. But her voice had not shook when she said, “Yes. I do. The place we’re trying to regain… I grew up there. This is personal.” Her eyes had crumbled, and she had whispered. “I’m so sorry. I have to go.”

And Hakoda had sat there and watched the oceans in his chest recede, leaving only flat stretches of wet sand, and the impression that water must have been there once. 

But he had smiled, and gotten up, and pulled her into a hug, and whispered, “Then go, and carry all our love with you. May it protect you better than any shield, and may home be everything you remember. Go, _shaimel,_ and know that we will always be waiting for you if you come back.”

The Water Tribe warriors had exchanged emotional goodbyes with the troops they had fought with for almost two years, and when they left, they stood on the shores and waved them off. 

Hei Min stood on the deck and watched, something tragic in the slump of her shoulders even as she waved goodbye. Hakoda forced a smile, and waved back, and kept waving until she was nothing more than a dot in the distance, and tried desperately to not feel as if everything was draining out of him all out once, a pot with a million leaks and no way to fix them. 

He watched her fade into the distance, and watched the ocean recede, leaving only huge stretches of wet sand and the impression that there must have been water there once.

Hei Min had offered to pull strings and set them up with another good unit of Earth Kingdom fights, but after nearly two years of fighting with Hei Min’s unit, they wanted no one else. So they split off, and for the first time in nearly two years, they were on their own. 

And Hakoda was on his own. Bato was not there to offer suggestions with his soft words and steady support, and Hei Min was not there with her unyielding determination and sharp-tongued wit and careful manipulation of battlefields. It was just Hakoda and his ships, in the middle of a sea of wet sand, looking out. 

If Hakoda were an optimistic person, he would have looked for what could be. He would have dug his fingers into the wet sand and looked at the gray sky and whispered, _There was water here. There could be water here, you know. This could be an ocean again. You could make this an ocean._

But Hakoda wasn’t really an optimist. He was just Hakoda, with fingers full of wet sand and an ocean that was not an ocean and there was no water there, and there was no one coming to give him water. No one coming to help him.

So he tucked away the ocean of wet sand in his chest, _(There could be water here, you know,)_ and he set course for Chai Men Bay, and gave orders that their only true goal would be to disrupt any action of the Fire Nation that they could. Hakoda was a sailor now, and sailors didn’t hesitate.

And for a few months, it, well. It would be a stretch to say that this new system of Hakoda doing everything on his own worked, but they were at least going somewhere, doing something. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about the girl. The firebender, the teenager wearing armor and fighting in a war. He couldn’t seem to banish her from his mind, any more than he could forget that she was Katara’s age.

So when they came across a small Earth Kingdom town that they saved from Fire Nation raiders, he had asked one of the village leaders if they knew why a teenager would be serving. 

The woman had tilted her head at him, her eyes growing sober, and said quietly, “Didn’t you know? About a year and a half ago, the Fire Lord lowered the draft age for firebenders from sixteen to fourteen. He saw the end in sight, and wanted more troops to speed it up, no matter how young they were.”

Hakoda had had to sit down to swallow his queasiness at that. 

But then, shockingly, the woman had smiled. “But I don’t think the war will last much longer.” When Hakoda had looked up at her, incredulous, she had smiled at him and said, “After all. It’s not every day the Avatar returns.”

Rumors of the Avatar popped up all the time in the war, but they always fizzled out eventually. He had just vanished. 

Katara had always believed the Avatar would come back someday, and finish the war, and fix the world. Sokka had always taken after Hakoda, though, in that he wasn’t waiting around for an Avatar to fix anything. 

Hakoda thought he was dead. This woman was living on the latest rumor, and that was fine for her. _She_ didn’t have to go out and fight teenagers. 

But a month and a half later, an ostrichhorse came riding up to their fleet in Chai Men Bay, and Bato swung off of it, grinning furiously. 

After the men welcomed Bato back properly (lots of yelling and shouting and clapping his good shoulder with their hands) Bato elbowed his way through the crowd, and grabbed Hakoda’s forearm with his good arm, grinning. 

“What are you doing here?” Hakoda laughed. “Not that I’m not glad to see you-” He had no clue how happy Hakoda was to see him. Finally, the water was starting to come back in over the oceans of sand in his chest. “But your shoulder isn’t done healing, is it?”

“No,” Bato said, “it isn’t.” He smiled, tilting his head a little, his eyes sparking. “But there’s something I think you should hear.”

\--

The Avatar had returned. 

The Avatar had returned in the form of a tiny airbending boy with a big heart and an even bigger determination. And with him were none other than Hakoda’s own children. 

When Bato had told him, eyes soft and voice softer, “I saw Sokka and Katara,” Hakoda’s knees had all but given out, and he had had to sit down. 

They had been hovering, ever-present, in the back of his mind since he stood on the deck of his boat, sailing westward and very pointedly not looking back. They had been pressing, echoes, into his arms for two years, his eyes aching with the memory of Sokka’s grins and his ears ringing with the ghost of Katara’s laughter. 

(This had been haunting him ever since the girl, the firebender in armor. Her face had ingrained itself into his memories, and it had sparked a realization deep in his chest. He didn’t know what his children looked like. 

Sokka and Katara had been frozen in his mind at thirteen and eleven respectively, round cheeks and wide eyes and the faces of young children. 

But they were fifteen and fourteen now, and they had grown in the years he had been gone. They must have. How had their faces changed? How were his memories wrong?

And now Bato had seen them, and Hakoda had not, and his memories must be wrong now, and he didn’t know what they looked like anymore. What did they look like?)

(If he saw them tomorrow, would he recognize them?)

Bato had told a story of the Avatar making a bad choice, and Sokka and Katara going with him, and then changing their minds. He told a story of a boy and a girl, and their stubborn eyes, and how they held hands when they left to go charging back after the Avatar. 

He told a story of determination, and three children that had traveled across half the world, and how Hakoda’s children had spoken about helping the Avatar, and traveling to the North Pole, and how they seemed half grown up already. Bato told Hakoda that his children had been told he was proud of them.

And Hakoda was proud of them. Bato described Sokka and Katara, and their stubborn eyes, and their fierce determination, and their resolve to help the Avatar. To change things. And Hakoda was so proud. But his arms echoed with the ghosts of two children who were, inexplicably and irrefutably, not the same people anymore. 

His children had lived without him, and grown without him, and if he saw them tomorrow, he wasn’t sure he would recognize them, and he was standing in the middle of an ocean of wet sand, just him and a useless boat and a gray sky and the knowledge that water was out there somewhere, but it wasn’t here. He was standing in the middle of an ocean without water, and the horizon was nowhere in sight, and he was staring at the gray sky, waiting for rain. 

It was months before the rain came. But oh did it come.

The rain came in the form of a boy, shouldering through the entrance of the tent, and looking at him with a set jaw and his wife’s eyes. Sokka’s eyes found him like they had never left, and Hakoda did recognize him. 

Hakoda’s first thought was that he was so tall. His limbs were in the stage where they hadn’t quite begun building enough muscle to accommodate their length, so his was all gangling limbs and uncertain height, but somehow he still looked so steady. 

Hakoda’s second thought was that he still looked like Sokka. The stubborn set of his jaw was the same, and his eyes still sparked with the fire of want, the need to know. 

His third thought was that he had grown. His face was starting to shed its youth, his cheekbones pushing out more, baby fat slowly vanishing. He had grown, and Hakoda hadn’t been there for it, and his face was as alien now as it was familiar. 

His fourth thought was to register the breaking hope bleeding all over the room from the fragments of glass flashing behind Sokka’s eyes, and his fifth thought was not even a thought so much as a consuming, desperate need to suddenly have him between his arms. 

Hakoda heard himself say, “Sokka,” like a prayer. Like hope. Like rain. 

Sokka’s face split into a tremulous smile, and, _oh._ Because it was the same, but it was different. And it ached. But here he was, and here Sokka was, and now Hakoda knew his smile again.

He was running practically before he registered moving, and Sokka crashed into his arms like a thousand rainstorms in the desert, Hakoda’s own personal monsoon. And Hakoda was in an ocean of wet sand, and rain was pouring from the gray skies, and everything was going to be alright.

\---

Hakoda might not have believed half of Sokka’s story if it hadn’t been coming from Sokka himself. 

Sokka had always believed in science, in practicality, in what you could see and measure and prove. But here he was, spinning a story of flying bison and insane feats and the kind of general chaos only four children could make when trying to save the world. 

He spoke of flying north, of freeing an floating rig of earthbenders. He spoke of temples hidden in the clouds, full of ash and the ghosts of a people who sailed air like water. He spoke of a fire prince trying to catch the Avatar, and a harried journey north, and a girl with golden fans and a ferocity to match Katara’s. 

He spun a story about the Northern Tribe, about tradition, about Katara challenging a master for her right to knowledge, because she had always been more like her brother than she knew. He spoke about a red moon, and then a black moon, and a princess with white hair and spirits buried in her veins. A boy with white eyes and a black koi fish and the rage of a primordial spirit unleashed on a fleet of Fire Navy ships. 

He spoke about a girl who could spin lighting on her fingertips, with blue flames and an insanity to put her brother’s to shame. He spoke about another girl, all fire and ferocity and stubborn as the rock she bent, a girl with milky eyes who sang with the earth, who’s blindness had never stopped her a day in her life. 

He spoke about running, about fighting, about Katara parting a sea and the Avatar learning the elements. He spoke about a drill, and the crumbling walls of the mightiest city in the world, and corruption and suppression and four children, tearing apart the world one piece at a time, and building it back higher. 

And Hakoda sat there, with Bato and Tanuk and the other men of the village, and they listened as his fifteen-year-old son told them, eagerly and unapologetically and matter-of-factly, how he had done more in half a year with three other children than they had in two years. 

Sokka continued, blissfully unaware of Hakoda’s growing feelings of ineptitude. “-so Aang is going to the Eastern Air Temple, I think, so he can meet with a guru that can help him master the Avatar State, and Toph is going to meet with her mom in the city, and Katara is staying with the generals to help plan the invasion and help the Earth King and wait for Suki and the others, and I’m here.” 

Sokka smiled, wide and bright, like he either didn’t realize or care that he had just told a story worthy of ballads. Like he didn’t realize he had just upended Hakoda’s whole world on its fragile axis. Didn’t realize that he had made himself into a hero and saved whole nations while Hakoda was trying to command one fleet. 

“So,” Sokka said brightly, looking at Hakoda with eyes that seemed borderline worshipful. “What have you all been up to?”

Hakoda looked at Bato, incredulous. Bato grinned back at him and raised an eyebrow as if to say, _You made this monster._

Hakoda’s story was far less interesting, and far less fantastical. But Sokka seemed sufficiently immersed in it, and asked questions that meant he was truly listening, even when Hakoda almost wished he wasn’t. 

(“Wait,” Sokka had cried when Hakoda tried to gloss over the story of a truly impressive bar fight in an Earth Kingdom town. “I want to know who won!” 

The answer was Hei Min, with a rather impressive swing of a whiskey bottle that knocked out a man twice her size. Hakoda and Bato had been cowering behind her. Not that either of them would admit it.)

When it was done, Sokka grinned at him, saying, “Well. I guess someday I’ll have to meet Hei Min. She seems like my kind of girl.”

“Oh, spirits no,” Bato groaned. “That would be a disaster, and I am preemptively forbidding it _right now.”_

“Awwww,” Sokka complained. “But I want to see her and Toph fight.”

“ _Absolutely_ not,” Hakoda cut in.

Sokka grinned. “Throw Katara in there. Just for fun. Just to see what happens.”

“No.”

“Aww, but Bato, it would be so funny!”

Bato dropped his head into his hands. “I blame you for this, Hakoda.”

“Why me?” Hakoda protested.

“You just _had_ to go and give birth to two menaces. Couldn’t give me a single functional niece or nephew. They’re both just disasters.”

“Hey,” Sokka protested. “Katara’s functional. She just has a short temper and a startling ability to throw down with anyone.”

Bato looked up at him, jabbing a finger in his direction. “Functional she may be, but she is also an irrefutable disaster. You should know. You’re the one who watched her _battle a waterbending master_ so he would teach her.”

Sokka pursed his lips, fighting a grin. “Okay, you may have a point there,” he admitted. 

Then he grinned, lighting up with pride. “But I’m not sure Pakku could win if he fought her now. She’s pretty scary. And she and Toph keep comparing moves in their styles, modifying them for their elements. It’s completely terrifying. And you can’t ever tell her I said this, but she could totally beat me up. She’s not bending droplets anymore.” He shot Hakoda a blinding smile, saying seriously, “You would be so proud of her.”

Hakoda’s throat closed up, sand spilling into his chest down from his clenched throat like some kind of monstrous hourglass. “I’m sure I would,” he managed, and it only sounded a little strained. 

He pictured Katara, the edges of her face fading with time, and he tried to imagine how it had changed. He tried to imagine her sweet face, set in a snarl for war. He found he could not do either, and it sent fresh sand pouring into his ribs. 

Seized by a sudden desperation, he reached forward, grabbing Sokka’s shoulders and pulling him into another hug. He buried his face in Sokka’s hair, and murmured, “I missed you so much.”

Sokka melted between his arms, leaning into him. His chin slid against Hakoda's shoulder, and he murmured, “We missed you too.”

Sokka didn’t fit right in his arms anymore. He was too tall, and there were poking limbs where Hakoda didn’t remember them from before, and his grip was too strong for the thirteen-year-old who lived in Hakoda’s mind along with his other ghost child. Hakoda’s chin couldn’t quite fall on top of his head when they were sitting anymore, and the echo of the child he remembered clashed with the boy between his arms. But even if it wasn’t what he remembered, it was still good. 

For the next three days, Sokka slid back into the camp almost effortlessly, following Hakoda around just like he used to. Hakoda might have thought it childish, if he didn’t think he needed it even more than Sokka did. 

He gave orders to the men to get ready for battle, and Sokka asked, “What should I do?”

Hakoda froze, and turned back to look at Sokka. He thought of Sokka, racing across the globe. He thought of Sokka, fighting warriors and keeping the Avatar safe, and doing more than he had in two years in half a year. He breathed out through his nose, and said, “Didn’t you hear me? I said men, get ready for battle.” 

It only felt a little like swallowing the sky. 

And then the bison hit the ground. Sokka whipped around like he had done it a million times before. His eyes met the boy sitting atop the bison, and his face fell as he muttered, “That can’t be good.”

The boy- the _Avatar-_ leapt down from the bison with a length and grace that no one should have, and came sprinting down the beach towards Sokka. Sokka took off towards him, meeting him about halfway and grabbing his forearms. 

“Sokka,” the Avatar gasped, his eyes wide. 

He burst into speech, his words tripping and stumbling, and for a second Hakoda thought he was just talking too fast for Hakoda to understand, but Sokka reached down, cupping his cheek and saying, “Hey, whoah, Aang, slow down. Also, it might help if you could switch to a language I speak.”

The Avatar gasped, shaking his head and switching effortlessly to the language of the Water Tribes. “It’s Katara.”

Sokka straightened, his eyes narrowing, but his hand stayed calm on the Avatar’s cheek. “What about her?”

“I had a vision,” the Avatar said hurriedly. “I think she’s in trouble, we have to go check on her, Sokka.”

“Alright, hey, calm down,” Sokka said soothingly. “Katara’s pretty good at taking care of herself. And it’s not exactly unlike you to have time-warp visions. Plus, she’s there with Suki. Are you sure that something’s wrong?”

The Avatar nodded furiously. He looked on the verge of tears. “I’m really worried, Sokka,” he whispered, his eyes wide, trembling fingers curling around Sokka’s wrist. “I think something’s really wrong.”

Sokka stood still for a second, just staring down at the smaller boy.

(And, spirits, was this really the Avatar? The Great Bridge? He was so _young._

A face flashed in his mind, gold eyes silhouetted against the light of flames, and he thought of Sokka, of Katara, of this Toph, wherever she was, and he thought maybe you could never be old enough for this, for any of it.)

Then Sokka pulled him in, giving him a hug and murmuring into his scalp, “Okay. We’ll go check on her.” 

The Avatar heaved a sigh of relief, and crumpled into Sokka’s arms. Sokka pressed a kiss onto his head, and pulled himself free, turning to face Hakoda. But it didn’t escape Hakoda’s notice that he never let go of the Avatar’s hand. 

Sokka looked at him, his eyes hard and face set with determination, and for a second he seemed older than he was, and so much taller than Hakoda. “I have to go,” he said, his mouth set in a hard line. 

The words were unapologetic, and unwavering, and he looked Hakoda in the eyes as he said them. 

(A thousand years ago, Hakoda had stood in a tent with the men, and they had said they were leaving, and he had avoided their eyes.) 

Hakoda swallowed past the lump in his throat, and resisted the urge to say, _Are you sure?_

Instead, he pulled Sokka into a hug, and said, “I’m proud of you.” 

Sokka leaned into the hug. He didn’t quite fit right in Hakoda’s arms, and only one arm wrapped around Hakoda, because his other hand was still linked with the Avatar’s.

“We’ll be here for a while,” Hakoda said abruptly. “If you have time, you can come back.”

Sokka pulled back and smiled at him. “Maybe,” he said. 

And then he turned around, and he and the Avatar ran back to the bison standing on the shore, slapping its massive tail to send up clouds of dust and growling at nothing every few seconds. The Avatar leapt up between the horns in one graceful leap, and Sokka jumped from one leg to another, hoisting himself into the saddle with a practiced ease. The bison let out a roar, and took off in a swirl of sand and rushing air.

Hakoda stood on the shore, and watched the bison until it faded into the distance. If Sokka looked back at him, Hakoda hadn’t seen it. 

Bato came up behind him, dropping a comforting hand on his shoulder. “He’ll be back,” he said quietly. “Katara’s too stubborn to let anything happen to him, and if what we’ve heard of the Avatar and his earthbending master, they aren’t any different.”

Hakoda let out a measured breath, his air hanging between them like the other shoe waiting to drop. “I know,” he said, and didn’t say that it didn’t matter, because _he_ couldn’t be there to help. 

The next week passed in a blur. 

Hakoda kept waking from dreams of racing through icy labyrinths, faces flickering incomplete on the ice around him. He kept seeing flashes of Sokka and Katara’s faces on the sheets of frozen liquid, the images shifting and eddying like water, and he kept hearing fragments of their laughter just around the corner, their voices echoing all around him. Every time he rounded a corner their laughter drifted further from him, the echoes growing louder until he couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from at all. 

He woke up covered in sweat, gasping, his arms aching with the clashing echoes of their bodies leaning into him. 

Bato kept shooting him concerned looks in the day, eying the bags beneath his eyes, but he didn’t ask. Hakoda was torn between being upset and relieved by this. Because he wanted to be reassured, though of what he wasn’t sure. But he didn’t want to talk about it, the labyrinthine ice that hummed in his mind with the echoes of children he hadn’t truly seen in years. He didn’t know what to call the pit in his stomach, and he wasn’t sure he wanted a name for it. 

He was a sailor now, and sailors didn’t hesitate. 

It was a week and a half later that Pewuq burst into the tent shouting, “Chief, Chief! The Avatar’s bison is approaching from the east!”

Hakoda leapt up from where he was seated in an important meeting he probably shouldn’t be running out of, and raced after Pewuq, who was vibrating with excitement. 

True to Pewuq’s word, the Avatar’s bison was dipping in a slow circle towards the shore. Hakoda stopped, taking a breath, and trying to compose himself, proceeding down the beach in a more controlled fashion than the abandon that had chased him from the command tent. 

He was halfway down the beach when the bison finally drifted to a stop, much more gently than the last time. 

A figure popped up out of the saddle, hoisting themselves over the edge and dropping to the sandy ground. From here, Hakoda could see that the figure was clothed in green. Toph. 

He strode up to the bison just as Sokka slid down from the bison’s head. Toph whipped around, dropping into a defensive stance, her teeth bared in a snarl, and the sand beneath Hakoda’s feet hissed ominously. 

“Toph,” Sokka said, walking up to her and dropping a hand onto her shoulder. “Relax. This is my dad.” He looked up at Hakoda. “Dad, this is Toph.”

The earthbender girl (spirits, she was so tiny, easily as young as the Avatar) slumped out of the position, all of the fight going out of her at once. “Oh,” she said, her voice exhausted, and Hakoda blinked. Was this really the same Toph Sokka had spoken about? She didn’t seem fiery enough. 

Hakoda turned to look at Sokka, and abruptly stopped. Because Sokka looked years older than he had a week ago. Not in the shape of his face, but in the pale cast of his gaze, and the tenseness in his shoulders, and the set of his mouth. He looked like he had walked through a burning building, and watched people succumb around him to the flames, and was trying to learn how to breathe through all the new smoke in his lungs.

Hakoda sucked in a breath, and reached tentatively for his shoulder. “Sokka?” he asked hesitantly. “Are you okay?”

Sokka let out a noise like a mix between a laugh and a choke, and buried his face in his hands. “That,” he said weakly, “is an excellent question. One that I… do not have an answer to.”

Toph let out a snort that sounded like a snarl, derisive and stretched thin and far too jaded for her young face. 

“I do,” she said angrily, and, oh, there was the Toph Sokka had told them about. “Fucking no you aren’t. None of us are. Now can your dad shut up for like five seconds so we can get this done? This ground is sand, so it’s all hands on deck.”

Hakoda turned to look at her, a little shocked by her harsh words, and more than a little confused. Get what done? What did the sand have to do with anything? 

But it seemed to make sense to Sokka, because he shrugged Hakoda’s hand off, and turned around to face the bison. “You got him?” he called up, his voice weary but still loud.

A grunt answered from the saddle, and then a voice said, “I think so. Ready whenever you are, Toph.”

Sokka slid to the side, pulling Hakoda with him. Toph stepped forward, muttering under her breath about _stupid damn sand,_ planted her feet, and shoved her hands forward palms out, thumbs folded in. 

The beach let out a startling rushing sound, sand leaping after Toph’s hands. The ground around the bison’s feet solidified before Hakoda’s eyes, and sand shot out, condensing into rough sandstone stairs. Toph slid into another stance, stepping back before swinging forward again and stomping her foot with a startling boom. The rough edges on the stairs sheared off like sheets of ice calving off a glacier, leaving stairs as refined and sturdy as any Hakoda had seen.

That seemed to be what Sokka had been waiting for, because he called up again, “You ready?”

“Yeah,” the other voice replied. “But get ready in case I trip.”

“You know we will,” Toph said. 

“Okay,” the other voice said, and then stood up in the saddle. And Hakoda caught his first glimpse of his daughter in two years. 

Katara stood up, her back straight, _something_ cradled in her arms in a way that made Hakoda think it was unspeakably important to her. Her face, like Sokka’s, had grown up. She stood in the saddle, and he knew she was taller, but she still seemed so small. It was in the curve of her shoulders, and the bags beneath her eyes, and her presence of aching exhaustion. 

Hakoda’s eyes never left her as she slid carefully over the side of the saddle, easing her feet onto the stairs and starting down. She didn’t look at him once. 

Katara made it to the second to last step, and her ankle twisted beneath her, giving out. Katara yelped. Sokka cursed. Toph threw her arm up in an arc, and the sandstone snapped up to meet Katara’s leg before she fell over entirely.

Sokka let out a string of curse words under his breath, sliding up beside her. “Let me take him,” he said softly. “You’re still wiped from the session this morning.”

Katara shook her head. “No,” she said stubbornly. “I’ve got it.”

Sokka let out a sharp exhale, brushing his fingers over her cheek. “ _Shaimele,”_ he said softly. “I just want to help. I won’t let anything happen, and the best way you can help him is by doing your magic water. But magic water wipes you out. So maybe, sometimes, you could let us help you with this, at least.”

Katara let out a shaky breath, and Hakoda realized with shock that she seemed on the verge of tears. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw Katara cry. 

She sat there for a second, one leg still folded under her, arms curled around what she was holding. (Though Hakoda had a sinking suspicion that it might not be a _what_ at all.)

Katara closed her eyes, and nodded, and whispered something that Hakoda couldn’t hear. But Sokka leaned in, and pressed a slow kiss to her forehead, and stretched his arms out towards her. Katara let out another shaky breath, and, ever so slowly, eased the bundle in her arms into Sokka’s. 

Sokka scooted back on his knees, and carefully pushed himself into standing. Toph, who Hakoda had all but forgotten, flicked her fingers, and the rock around Katara’s leg crumbled. Katara pushed herself to her feet on shaking legs, swiping furiously at her eyes. 

The three of them stood there, only inches from each other, heads partially bowed, and suddenly Hakoda felt as if he were intruding on some kind of sacred ritual. As if his presence were violating a sacrosanct kind of pause in the world’s chaos. 

But she was right there. Katara was right there, and the part of him that rang with the spirit of a martyr wanted her in his arms, to see how she didn’t fit there anymore. He wanted her close to him, ache in his chest be damned. 

He took a step forward, and all three of them startled, Katara’s head snapping up to look at him. Hakoda stared at her, drinking in her face like a desert plant lapping up rain. She looked painfully, startlingly, irrefutably like her mother. 

In another, less cruel world, it wouldn’t have hurt to see his wife’s face in his daughter. But it was a cruel world, and it did hurt. 

But it was still her, still Katara, still one half of the emptiness that had lived in his chest for the past two years. “Katara,” he said softly, and wondered if it sounded like the prayer it felt like. 

Katara’s face did something very complicated, something very unlike what Sokka’s had done, lighting up the first dawn after the winter. Her face lit up and shut down, crumpling and softening and hardening all at once. 

A small part of Hakoda, that part that wasn’t busy panicking at the cascade of emotions, wondered when she stopped looking at him like he hung the stars. Wondered when her feelings got so complicated about him. 

But then she said, “Dad,” and slipped past Toph, and fell into his arms. She fit all wrong. She was too tall, and too thin, and too muscular to be the girl he remembered. But she was still one half of the emptiness that had lived in his chest for the past two years, and she was still Katara, still his daughter, still one half of the reason he got up in the morning. So he pulled her closer and closed his eyes and sank into the moment, ache in his chest be damned. 

Katara pulled away, too soon to ever appease the roaring in his chest that begged for more of them, but it was okay. She was here now, and Sokka was here now, and they had all the time in the world. 

But to his surprise, she didn’t ask anything about what he had been doing, didn’t say anything about how much she had missed him. Katara looked into his face and said, “Do you have someplace we can set up a tent?”

Hakoda blinked, because of all the things she could have asked him, that was the last thing he would have expected. But if his daughter was asking for it...

“Of course,” Hakoda said, dropping a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Where do you want to put it?”

“In the middle,” Katara said firmly. “Someplace defensible. Where attackers would have to get past others to get there.”

Hakoda blinked. He felt his lips pull down into a tiny frown unconsciously. When had she started thinking like a tactician? When had she stopped thinking like a little kid with nothing better to do than annoy her brother? Hakoda didn’t know. And he didn’t want to know why.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “We should be able to find a spot like that.” He hesitated. Then, “But, can I ask what it is that you’re trying to protect?” 

Already, he knew he wouldn't like the answer.   
But he wasn’t prepared for their reaction. He wasn’t prepared for all three of them shutting down, their faces going carefully blank, icy and unforgiving as a glacier wall. Instantly, an aura of danger began to seep out from their closed shoulders and shuttered expressions, such so that Hakoda took a step back.

( _They’re some of the most dangerous fighters I’ve ever seen in my life,_ Sokka had told him, eyes flashing with a kind of angry pride. _And by now, I’ve seen some of the best the world can offer._

Hakoda had exchanged glances with Bato at that, because surely Sokka was exaggerating. But Hakoda looked at his son, hard-eyed and furious, and Toph, her mouth set in a hard line, fingers clenched as if to prepare to shred something, and Katara, everything about her icy and sharp-edged and screaming death and danger and blizzards in the dark, and he thought Sokka might not have been exaggerating at all.) 

Toph was the one to answer him. Her words came out gritty and hard and unyielding, and they hit Hakoda in the gut like a cannonball. “Not what,” she said flatly. “Who. You got space for a half-dead Avatar?”

\--

Katara and Toph pitched the tent in silence, working with a kind of seamless, mutual understanding that Hakoda knew only came with years or battles. And Hakoda knew they hadn’t had years. 

They finished the tent, and Sokka eased his way in, a ghostly pale Avatar laying unresponsive in his arms. Toph slammed a foot into the ground, and Katara picked up the waterskin she had dropped when setting up the tent. She kissed Toph on her forehead, and slipped into the tent. 

Barely five minutes later, Sokka burst from the tent and barely made it five feet before he crumpled to his knees and puked all over the ground. Toph crouched behind him, dropping a hand on his shoulder. Sokka finished puking, and sat back on his heels. 

Toph offered him a hand, and Hakoda watched in confusion as he didn't take it, but instead crossed his wrist over hers and left them there, sitting on his knee. 

Slowly, Hakoda walked over to the tent and was about to go in when Toph said, loudly, “No.”

Hakoda froze, his hand hovering over the tent flap. He turned to look at her, and found her milky eyes already fixed on him. Logically, he knew she couldn’t really see him, but it didn’t change the fact that it felt like she could see everything, could see right through him. 

“What?”

Toph’s blank face turned into a scowl, and the ground shuddered with her displeasure. “I said no. You will not be going in there. If you attempt to, I _will_ sink you up to your waist in the ground, and leave you to get out on your own.”

Only years of self-control kept Hakoda’s jaw from dropping. “Why?” he asked. 

Toph’s scowl deepened, and Hakoda couldn’t help but feel as if maybe this was more than just displeasure with his current actions. 

“Because,” she said, in a tone of voice that suggested that he was both incredibly stupid, and also wasting her time. “Sokka just _looked_ at that wound and spewed up his breakfast. And that was before Katara even started working on it. It’s going to be worse now. Besides, if you go in there, you’ll mess up her concentration at best, and screw up the healing session at worst, and Aang is unstable enough as it is.” 

Her eyebrows pulled down into an expression that reminded Hakoda of a polar beardog mother separated from her pup. Ready and willing to destroy. 

“And, just so we’re clear,” Toph growled, “If you do anything to screw up a healing session, if you undo all Katara’s work and get Aang killed because you were too stupid to listen to me, I’ll break your spine myself.”

Hakoda looked at her. He was sure his eyes were far too wide, but… She was joking, right? She had to be joking. She was too young to kill someone. 

Golden eyes flashed in his memories, a hazy face through the smoke, a voice shouting, _Retreat!_

Maybe she wasn’t too young to kill someone. 

Toph kept staring, unseeing, as he stood by the tent flap. Her milky eyes pierced him deeper than any knife, her face set in the same deadly scowl. She reached down, placing one hand flat against the ground. She curled her fingers in, and with a cracking, shuddering groan, the bedrock beneath them shifted, the ground above it following. Her flat eyes never moved from him.

Hakoda swallowed, suddenly and vividly convinced that she was completely serious. And completely capable of following through with her threat. He stepped away from the tent.

It was another hour and a half before Katara emerged again. She came out, her gait slow and careful, as if she were measuring it, because she would crumble if she didn’t.

Katara walked past him, and dropped onto the ground beside Sokka and Toph. 

The two of them straightened from where they had been having a very halfhearted game of thumb wrestling. Toph swallowed, and Sokka took her hand, both of them turning towards Katara. 

Hakoda let out a slow breath, and took a step back. There it was again. That feeling. That he was intruding on something personal. Something sacred. Something that he had no right to. 

“So?” Sokka asked softly.

“Yeah,” Toph said, her voice imbued with a forced-sounding calm. “Report, Sugar Queen.”

Katara closed her eyes, digging her fingers into the sand. Her eyes stayed closed, and for a count of five heartbeats she said nothing, as if she were composing herself. Then she opened her eyes and fixed them on her friends, flicking back and forth between Sokka and Toph’s faces. She never looked at Hakoda.

“The main part of the wound is relatively unchanged,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “But I’m starting to make progress on the edges. I’m already beginning to see signs of the muscles atrophying. Part of that might be the lack of movement, but that usually happens slower, so I’m thinking it has more to do with a lack of circulation. For the most part, the veins and arteries throughout his back have been fried. I’m repairing them as fast as I can, but it’s slow going, and the infection isn’t helping. I’m doing my best with the water, but soon I think we’re going to have to stop somewhere to get normal things for stopping infections. Herbs, salves, stuff like that.”

Sokka let out a shaky breath, and nodded. “How soon do you think we can start applying things like that?”

“A few days at best,” Katara said. “A few weeks at worst.”

“Weeks?” Toph said, startled. “We get burns, and you slather it on right away. Why is this different?” 

Hakoda thought she sounded angry, furious even, at Katara specifically. If Hakoda had been in Katara’s place, he would have reprimanded her. 

But Katara was not Hakoda, and maybe there was something Hakoda didn’t know, because while it wasn’t uncommon for Katara to lose her temper, she didn’t. 

Katara reached out, and placed her hand on Toph’s wrist. “It’s different,” she said calmly, “because it didn’t just hurt the upper layer of the muscles. I’ve had to cut away large sections of dead skin and tissue right on the surface. I can’t apply certain things right now to the muscles. The water seems to be speeding up how soon new tissue and skin grows, but it still might be a while. And until then, all I can do is work with the water and keep the wound as clean as I can.”

Toph frowned. “Keep it clean? But it’s not touching anything.”

Katara closed her eyes, taking a tremulous breath. It was the first time Hakoda had seen any part of her wall crack.   
“You’re right,” she said quietly. “It’s not touching anything but the bandages. But the problem isn’t anything touching the wound. It’s…” She swallowed. “The infection is already in the wound. To keep it clean I… I have to get the pus out.”

For a split second, all three of the children just stared at each other. Then Toph said, “I’m gonna be sick.”

Sokka lurched out of the way, and not a second too soon. Toph made good on her promise, immediately doubling over and puking all over Katara’s lap. 

But, to Hakoda’s shock, Katara’s initial reaction was not much more than a wince. Instead of pulling away, she reached forward, pulling Toph’s bang’s from her face and pinning them back against her forehead. Her hand came up to stroke Toph’s shoulder as she murmured apologies to the younger girl, her voice calm in a practiced manner. 

Sokka dropped behind Toph, rubbing small circles in her lower back. 

Hakoda just watched. 

When Toph finally stopped puking, nothing but bile leaving her lips anymore anyway, she sat up and made a face. Her voice was shaky but still strong when she said, “Katara, did you really just let me puke all over your lap?”

Katara’s face broke, for the first time since she had arrived, into a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “But it’s fine. Cleanup won’t be bad.”

She stood up, nudging Toph away with her foot that was (mostly) clean. Then her hands came out, dipping down and then pulling back up in one smooth motion. The puke followed, disconnecting from her clothes and leaching out of the ground, drifting up through the air. Katara’s eyes narrowed, and she swung one hand in a circle. The puke drifted into a loose ball close to Sokka’s head.

Sokka made a face and gagged dramatically. “Ew, Katara!” he cried, scrambling away from the puke ball. “I thought you loved me!”

Katara’s lips tugged up in a tiny smile. “You’re a moron, then.”

Sokka squawked indignantly, and Toph let out a loud laugh. 

Katara flicked her fingers at the ball, and it pulled in, condensing. With a crackling sound, the whole ball turned to ice. Katara turned back to Sokka and Toph, a tight smile stretching over her face. “Are we taking bets?” she asked.

“Three ship lengths out from the shore,” Sokka said immediately. 

“Coward,” Toph said dismissively. “Five ship lengths, minimum.”

“What’s happening?” Hakoda cut in.

All three of them jumped, turning to face him with expressions that suggested they had entirely forgotten he was there. 

“Wait and see,” Sokka said with a tight grin.

Katara grinned at them, something vicious in her eyes. “Ready?”

“Fire at will, Captain!” Toph said loudly.

Katara spun, swinging her arm behind her and then up and over towards the ocean, like she was throwing a spear. The icy puke ball followed, shooting out over the skyline like a rogue cannonball.

It soared out over the waves, arcing up and then slowly down, finally landing in a skipping splash at least seven ship lengths away from the shore. 

Sokka let out a string of curses, and Toph yelled, “HA! That sounds like victory to me!” 

“Dammit,” Sokka hissed under his breath. “Katara, why couldn’t you be worse at waterbending?”

Katara brushed her skirt off, smiling demurely. “I mean, if you’d prefer to die,” she said, shrugging.

Then all three of them froze. Hakoda’s breath caught in his throat, and he looked back and forth between them. 

Sokka’s loud laugh cut through the silence. “Well, hopefully we can avoid that,” he said, grinning. The girls grinned back at him, and neither of them spoke about the tightness behind all of their eyes, so Hakoda didn’t either. 

Hakoda cleared his throat. The three turned back to face him as if they had, once again, forgotten that he was there. Hakoda wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much.

He moved forward, dropping a hand on Katara’s shoulder. “Obviously,” he said softly, “you three are welcome-”

“Four,” Toph said coldly. 

“What?”

“There are four of us,” Toph repeated. 

Hakoda paused, the Avatar’s pale, deathly face swimming behind his eyes, and shoved down the part of him that whispered, _Not for much longer._ “The four of you,” he corrected, “are welcome to stay for as long as you would like.” 

He looked down at Katara, and for a split second he caught something hovering over her face. Her eyes flashed with a kind of bitterness, her lips pursed unhappily, flattening into a harsh line. Then it was gone, so quickly that Hakoda wondered if he had imagined it. But he didn’t think he could imagine that kind of expression on Katara’s face. 

Katara looked up at him, her face carefully blank but for her tired smile, and said, “Thanks, Dad.” 

Hakoda wondered if he had imagined the bitter tone in her voice as well. 

“Actually,” Sokka said quietly. “We had something we wanted to talk to you all about.”

Hakoda raised an eyebrow. “The whole fleet?”

Sokka nodded. 

Toph dug her feet into the ground, a frown settling onto her features. It was starting to seem like a frown was the most common of Toph’s facial expressions.

“Are we sure about this, Snoozles?” she asked. 

Hakoda blinked, mentally marking considering Sokka’s nickname into his schedule later. Toph plowed on. 

“I mean, the whole plan kind of revolved around Twinkletoes. And if…”

“No,” Katara cut in, acidic for the first time. “That is not an option. It will not happen. I will not _let_ it happen.”

Toph’s frown fell, her face drifting into something like a mix of resignation and a carefully hidden grief. “I know,” she said, her voice surprisingly soft. “I know you won’t. But if we’ve learned anything, it’s that things happen. And if he isn’t up and about again before it, then we have to be ready for that.”

“We have the plan,” Sokka said, placing a soft hand on Katara’s shoulder. “We wait for Aang to wake up, and if he doesn’t before the Black Sun, then we send in Katara.”

Toph sighed. “I still think we should send me in. We don’t even know how much water there would be for her to use-”

“Toph,” Sokka said evenly. “We’ve already talked this over. We would need you more to handle the defense from the outside. There’s only so much water can do to a tank, but you can-”

“Alright, yeah, yeah, I know,” Toph groaned. She frowned. “Just because I know it’s the smart thing to do doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Katara dropped a hand on Toph’s shoulder. “You don’t have to worry about protecting me,” she said quietly.

Toph turned to face her, a ghost of a smile tugging at her lips. “I can take care of myself pretty well, too. You don’t have to worry about protecting me either. But that’s never stopped you. It’s not that I don’t know you can handle yourself. You’ve handed me my ass enough times sparring to show me that. I know you can protect yourself. But it’s still you, and it’s still me. And I still…” 

Toph trailed off, seeming to run out of words. Or maybe to run out of ways to explain herself. Immediately, she curled back into herself, as if she had exposed to many truths of her own. 

But Katara smiled, regardless of the fact that Toph couldn’t see, and squeezed her shoulder. “Okay,” she said softly. “You’ve made your point. You’re right. And for the record? I care about you too.”

Toph let out a slow breath, a tiny smile crossing her lips. 

Hakoda cleared his throat. “Would someone like to tell me what this mysterious plan is?” 

The three kids exchanged loaded looks and taps that he couldn’t quite untangle. Then, as one, they turned to face him. 

“You should get everyone together,” Sokka said grimly.

“It’s a long story,” Toph added.

Katara’s lips flattened, her voice tired. “And we don’t have nearly enough time to be ready.”

\---

It had been almost a week since Sokka, Katara, and Toph had arrived. Almost a week since the three of them dropped the bombshell of a looming solar eclipse and possible Fire Nation invasion on their heads. And Hakoda was going a little bit crazy. 

The fleet was preparing for the invasion. Or attempting to, at least. The biggest problem was also potentially their greatest advantage. And that problem was currently dead to the world in Katara’s tent, happily comatose and unaware of the fact that his friends were falling apart only feet from him. 

The Avatar seemed no closer to waking up than he had since the last week, and it was even starting to wear on the Water Tribe members. 

The closest any of them had come to meeting Aang were Sokka’s stories, and the one frantic conversation on the beach Hakoda had been privy to. 

None of them had even actually met him, but from what they understood, he was an excitable kid who tried to always stay optimistic. It was a hard image to reconcile with the ghostlike figure who laid, ever still, in Katara’s tent.

Though at this point Hakoda was unsure if it could even count as just Katara’s tent when most mornings he could catch either Toph or Sokka coming out with Katara, and sometimes both of them at once. 

Sokka had a tent, and Hakoda had seen Toph make earth tents, so it wasn’t lack of space that was an issue. When he had tried to ask Toph about it, she had told him, quite aggressively, to mind his own business. 

When he tried to ask Sokka, Sokka deflated, falling silent and too-old in the way that he was far too often. Sokka had looked up at him and said, “We’ve spent months sleeping around a campfire together, and you’re getting bent out of shape about us sharing a tent? It would be weirder for us to sleep apart. And besides,” he had said, his voice turning bitter and angry, though angry at who, Hakoda wasn’t sure. 

“Are we not allowed to miss him?” Sokka had said bitterly, and walked away without waiting for an answer. 

Hakoda never asked Katara. 

They kept sleeping in Katara’s tent. Hakoda said nothing more about it.

So now the Water Tribe was trying to plan an invasion without the person it would revolve around. It wasn’t going great.

Their best asset in planning was, surprisingly, Sokka. 

Sokka examined maps with practiced eyes, scanning where Fire Nation troops were posted, and where Earth Kingdom troops held control, and mapped multiple ways for them to get close to Caldera City. He took a sheet of paper once without telling Hakoda what he would do with it, and sent it off with a messenger hawk. He told Hakoda that if it worked, they would have a way past the Gates of Azulon, but that he didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up for nothing. 

Hakoda had wondered aloud once about when his son had gotten so smart and mature. Toph, who had been stretched out in hearing range, had snorted. “Well, I don’t know about mature,” she said dryly, “but if Katara is to be believed, he’s always been smart. Maybe you just weren’t paying attention.”

Hakoda didn’t know what to think of Toph. 

Because Katara and Sokka clearly loved her, would kill and die for her. And Toph was plenty mean to them sometimes, or even most of the time.   
But Toph was just cruel with Hakoda himself. He wasn’t even sure if it was conscious. But still, some part of Toph truly, deeply hated him. He didn’t know why. He didn’t even know if he wanted to know why. 

And Sokka and Katara. They were back. Finally, finally, all of Hakoda’s world was back together, was with him. So why did they still feel so far from his reach?

Sokka seemed himself, mostly. He was still silly, still caring, still the first one to the punch with a witty joke. It was so easy for Hakoda to slide back into how he used to be. So easy to forget that anything had ever changed at all. 

But then Sokka would say something, or do something. Bump Toph’s shoulder, grinning, and say, “Well, nothing can be as bad as that one city on the coast, Wivana Mei, remember?” or he would casually hook the edge of a knife under the lip of a crate from a Fire Nation raid and pry it open like he had done it a million times, and Hakoda would be yanked from his world of pretending. 

It would slam into him, spinning him around, a train knocked off its track, careening through the air. A sharp reminder that Sokka had lived for two years without him, growing and becoming and being, and Hakoda wasn’t there for any of it. 

(It didn’t hurt that Katara and Toph never seemed unnerved by these things. It didn’t hurt that his daughter and some stranger knew Sokka better than he did. It _didn’t_ hurt.)

And Katara. 

Katara hurt maybe even more than Sokka did. Part of it was that she seemed to have changed more than he had, if not on the inside then on the surface. 

She held herself differently. Taller, her back more straight. She kept her chin tilted up, and her eyes were perpetually set with a kind of hardened knowledge that came from tried-and-true battle, that came from knowing what war really was, in more than one definition. 

(It only made Hakoda ache inside some nights, that she was fourteen and carried herself with the same silent certainty that Hei Min did with her seven years of fighting.)

But more than that, she just… didn’t seem to care about him. 

No. That wasn’t fair.

Katara cared, Hakoda was certain she did. But he kept catching her looking at him. Her eyes would be narrowed, and her lips flat, eyebrows pulled down with something like hatred. And sometimes her voice would come out too sharp, her words too edged, too bitter and angry for it to possibly be a coincidence. 

As the days went by, it only got worse. Every day she seemed to have less patience for him than the last. Her words got sharper and stayed that way. She stopped trying to wipe her face clear of emotion when he caught her looking. Her eyes would linger on him, her face dripping with the dregs of some ugly thing that had taken root within her. 

Hakoda didn’t know what he had done to make Katara look at him like that. He didn’t know how to fix it. And at the end of the day, it was just another nasty reminder that he could never know everything that he had missed in the past two years. 

And Toph was something too, even if Hakoda, for the life of him, couldn’t quite puzzle out what that something was. She walked with the same ironclad certainty that Katara did, and everything she did was so loud. Her laughter was loud, and her grins were loud, and the way she sprawled out, taking over any space she was given and much she was not, that was loud too. She was aggressive, and confident, and Hakoda couldn’t figure out how his children had earned her trust. He certainly couldn’t seem to.

They all seemed so very painfully much like children. Until they so very painfully did not.

It was so easy to forget that the Avatar was even in their camp at all. He never left Katara’s tent. He never did anything at all. 

Hakoda had gone in to see him once. He had sat there next to the Avatar for all of ten minutes, trying not to be sick, before he had left the tent. It had been too much to stare at his too young face, empty of emotion, his pale skin and motionless form. Dead in everything but the slow rise and fall of his chest, the shallow wheeze of his breathing. 

Hakoda couldn’t imagine sleeping in there. He didn’t think he would have been able to convince himself he wouldn’t wake up next to a corpse. And he couldn’t reconcile the image painted behind his eyelids of the Avatar lying cold and pale in the shadows with the boy his children spoke of. They seemed worlds apart. 

The boy his children spoke of was bright and loud, his presence filling the rooms he was in. Days passed and the Avatar stayed comatose in Katara’s tent. 

Hakoda would go hours without even remembering him. And then Katara would leave a conversation to go have a healing session, or Sokka would fall silent in a conversation, or Toph would reference him casually, and Hakoda would remember. Would watch as all three of the children drifted out of the conversation, pulled into their own minds by the wake of their own loss. 

He caught them sometimes. One, or two, or even all three of them, sitting in some secluded corner or scrap of shadow. 

Most often it was Katara, her head bowed, her breaths shallow, fingers digging into her hair, eyes squeezed shut against the world like she was trying her damndest not to cry. 

But it wasn’t uncommon for Toph to be pressed up against her, head bowed and unnervingly silent. Or Sokka, his arm around her shoulders, their fingers laced together. 

Once or twice, he had even caught all three of them. Tucked away behind a tent, or beneath a rock outcrop. Falling apart together. 

The one that lingered in Hakoda’s mind though, was the time he had seen them sitting together out on the beach before the sun had even risen. 

Their figures had almost been obscured through the low fog, but Hakoda had seen them, far enough away that he couldn’t tell what they were saying. Katara had been in the middle, her legs tucked up beneath her, her shoulders shaking with sobs Hakoda couldn’t hear. 

On either side of her had been Toph and Sokka. One of Sokka’s arms was around Katara’s shoulders, his other hand linked with the hand of Katara’s that Toph hadn’t claimed. He was saying something, soft and indecipherable, leaning into Katara like she was the center of his gravity. 

As Hakoda had watched, Katara had dropped her head on Sokka’s shoulder, and Toph had dropped hers onto Katara’s, and Sokka had leaned his head against Katara’s, and the three of them had looked out towards the ocean, hidden through the fog, their spines bowed under the weight of their responsibilities, their demons, their pain, lying unresponsive only seconds away. 

(There was a horrible pain in waiting. There was an awful kind of agony in _maybe_ he’ll wake up.)

Hakoda’s mouth had gone dry, and he had turned away without interrupting. It had felt like something sacred. Something he had no right to. 

He had gone about his morning, trying to banish the image of three silhouettes against a blue sky from his mind. 

When Hakoda left the first meeting of the morning, the sun had risen, hanging golden in the sky, painting the fog fiery and burning. And the three of them were still there on the beach. 

Katara had fallen asleep, her head in Sokka’s lap, her feet in Toph’s, curled up on her side and more at peace than Hakoda had seen her since they reunited. Toph had fallen asleep too, curled up in the sand beside Katara’s back, their fingers still loosely tangled together. Sokka was still awake, looking out over the ocean. He looked up and saw Hakoda, a wry smile tugging at his lips. _I’ve got this,_ he had mouthed, shooing Hakoda away with the hand not tangled in Katara’s fingers. 

Hakoda felt his lips curl up into a smile, and hoped it didn’t look as hollow as it felt. He turned and walked away. _It seems you do,_ Hakoda had thought, and wondered why it felt so bitter to admit that they didn’t need him anymore. 

In retrospect, it was almost lucky that they made it a whole five days without getting attacked. Apparently his children had turned into trouble magnets in his absence, and Hakoda had a feeling that Toph and Aang weren’t particularly safe to be around either. 

Hakoda was fixing a leak in one of the ship’s hulls, watching Sokka and Toph play mancala in the corner of his eye. Toph was in the middle of a very loud bout of cursing when it happened. 

Ukate burst from the woods, racing down the beach towards them and shouting. His arms were waving frantically above his head, his words indecipherable over the wind. 

Sokka sat up, spinning around to look at Ukate tripping down the dunes. “Um, is he okay?” he asked. 

Bato raised up onto his knees from where he had been taking immense amusement from Sokka crushing Toph. He squinted down the beach at Ukate. “You know,” he said, “I really have no clue. That could mean anything.”

“What could mean anything?” Toph cut in, frowning at Sokka.

“Ukate,” Sokka said mildly. “He’s running down the beach like an arctic hen with its head cut off.”

Toph wrinkled her nose, brushing sand off her pants and dropping her feet flat against the beach, muttering about stupid sand. She frowned, her eyebrows pulling down. “Wow,” she said. “You’re right. He really is going ballistic.” 

Toph grinned, tipping her head towards Sokka. “Man, he kinda reminds me of that time Twinkletoes found a beecrab in his pants. But more frantic. If I didn’t know better I might even say he had run into a…” 

Toph’s voice faded out. Her head snapped around towards Ukate, then towards the woods only feet away from them, and then back to Sokka. 

Sokka shot up like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on him, his head whipping around towards Ukate and then back.

Sokka and Toph met eyes, something dawning over both of their faces in terrifying synchrony. Sokka flipped onto his feet, yanking his knife from his belt and dropping into a crouching stance facing the trees. 

Toph leapt to her feet and roared with a truly impressive volume, “GET DOWN!” throwing her hands out towards the woods. 

Half the beach seemed to respond to her demand, and a wall of sand seven feet thick went crashing into the trees. Seconds before it hit, a cacophony of yells echoed from behind the trees. A figure leapt from a branch, soaring down over the sand wall and hitting the beach in a roll. 

The figure leapt to its feet, and lunged. Sokka let out a truly impressive roar, and leapt right back at it. A shriek of metal on bone rippled over the beach, and Hakoda finally burst from his shock enough to recognize what was happening. 

Sokka shoved the Fire Nation patrol soldier back, dropping to the ground and snapping his ankle out from under him with a particularly nasty kick. The soldier hit the ground with a yelp, and Sokka was instantly on top of him. He threw up a hand, already sparking with flames, and Hakoda shouted a warning.   
Sokka didn’t need it. His hand was already swinging sideways, smashing the soldier’s hand into the sand and twisting it, his other hand swinging his knife at the soldier’s throat. 

Toph let out a snarl, swinging her foot out towards the tree, and another figure had to leap out of the way of the hunk of stone that shot up from the sand and towards them. 

Hakoda blinked, and suddenly he registered just how many soldiers were flooding down the beach. Thirty at least, and even more still rushing out of the woods. Toph’s wall of sand had apparently buried the first wave, but they were digging themselves out far faster than Hakoda would like. 

Toph spun, digging her feet into the sand and swinging her arms in a surprisingly fluid move. A stream of sand broke loose from the beach and plowed into five soldiers about to surround Bato in a move that seemed suspiciously like waterbending. 

Sokka leapt up next to Toph, swinging his knife into the armpit of a soldier about to stab her. The soldier staggered back with a shout, and Sokka swung a fist forward into his throat, sending him to the ground. 

He dropped to the ground, whipping around and throwing his boomerang. The metal crashed into the back of another soldier’s helmet, knocking him down, and Sokka lunged for the next. 

Shouts echoed from the tents, soldiers ripping back the flaps and diving in, swords drawn, or just setting them on fire altogether. 

Too late, Hakoda came back to his senses. He drew the knife belted at his hip, and leapt at the soldier charging at him. He ducked under the man’s sword. The sword buried itself in the hull of the ship, and Hakoda’s only thought was, _Oh, come on! I just fixed that!_

He ducked straight under his arm, whipping around and stabbing his knife into the crack between the helmet and the top of the neck armor. 

He spun around, not pausing over the dying soldier, and immediately tripped. His knee hit the ground, and he spun around to look at what he had tripped over. It was only then that he realized his hand was covered in sand, sticky with blood. 

Hakoda’s eyes fell on the soldier, gazing blankly up at the sky. The one that attacked Sokka, Hakoda realized. His throat hung open, a dark, bubbling gash facing up towards the blue sky. Red on blue on red. Dead by Sokka’s hand. 

Hakoda stared at the soldier’s blank eyes, and tried not to puke. When had his son become a killer? It was in defense. Hakoda knew that. But still. 

Sokka had done it and moved on without looking back, like he had done it a million times. When had it become practice, for a fifteen-year-old to murder without hesitation? When had the boy Hakoda left behind stopped being a boy?

It was a moment’s hesitation, lost to the throbbing empty space that dug its claws further into his chest with every reminder that his children were different than he remembered. Only a moment’s hesitation. But it was a moment too long. 

Hakoda flipped over, tearing himself from the man gazing unseeing at the sky, and just barely avoided being stabbed in the face. In his horror, he had missed the Fire Nation soldier charging at him. 

Hakoda swung his knife up to catch it on the hilt of the man’s sword. The man snarled, yanking his sword free and lunging back in with a vicious swing. Hakoda knew he wouldn’t be able to block this swing, so he didn’t try. 

He rolled out of the way not a second too late, and the sword buried itself in the sand where his neck had just been. Hakoda jumped up onto his knees, swinging his knife out at the soldier. 

The soldier knocked it aside with his wrist guard. The knife jerked, tugging his wrist painfully. Hakoda managed to cling to it for a second before it finally continued in its momentum, flying from his grasp to bury itself in the sand several feet away. 

Hakoda attempted to dive for it, but the soldier ripped his sword free of the beach and swung it down between them. Hakoda leapt free of the arc of gleaming metal, cursing. Realizing he had nowhere to go, nothing to fight with, and entirely out of options, Hakoda let loose a roar, and leapt on top of the soldier. 

The soldier staggered back with a yelp, and the two of them crashed to the beach in a tangle of limbs, both of them wrestling for control of the sword. For a few seconds, it was just the two of them, both yanking on the hilt of the sword. By now, Hakoda was sure this man wasn’t a bender, because if he were, Hakoda’s face would have been toast.

Hakoda elbowed the man in the gut, and he yelped, losing a little grip on the sword hilt. Hakoda grinned, twisting the hilt and yanking it up to smash into the man’s chin. 

But his small gain in ground was all lost when the soldier seemed to realize that he was about to lose control, sucked in a huge breath, and shouted, “Backup! I need ba-”

Hakoda snarled, one hand coming off the sword hilt to punch the man square in the throat. His words cut off with a strangled gurgle, but the damage was done. Hakoda’s head snapped up to see another soldier running towards them, sword drawn and clutched in one hand, clutching a fistful of orange flames with the other. 

Hakoda let out a string of curse words, still wrestling with the soldier beneath him for the sword. He started counting. 

The woman jumped down the first dune and landed in a cloud of sand. 

_One._

She kept running down, raising her hand, flames trailing from it like the wake of a wave. Hakoda smashed the palm of his fist into the man’s nose. 

_Two._

The woman skidded to a stop, dropping into a bending stance. Hakoda ripped the sword from the man’s grip. 

_Three._

Hakoda hooked his hands around the man’s shoulders, digging his heels into the sand and flipping them both, throwing the man on top of him and hunching into the sand, sweaty palm clutching the hilt of the sword. 

The woman’s bout of fire caught the man on the back and side with a sucking roar, and the man started screaming. The woman let out a shout, and the fire flickered into nothingness. Hakoda shoved the howling man off of his, shoving himself to his feet.  
In retrospect, it almost worked. Would have worked, even, if it weren’t for the soldier Hakoda hadn’t seen coming up on the other side. 

He crouched, raising the sword in front of him. It felt unwieldy in his grip, too long and too heavy and entirely ungraceful. Which made it all too easy for the woman behind him to swing her sword and knock it from his grip. 

Hakoda tried to spin around, and a kick landed on his shoulder, smashing him into the ground. Fingers, so hot they burned his throat, pressed up under his chin. “Try anything,” the woman hissed in his ear, “and you’ll find out what it feels like to have your brain melted into ashes.”

Hakoda swallowed. He was already debating how best to smash her legs out from under her when she straightened up and yelled, “Everyone drop their weapons! Unless you’d like your chief to go to Agni early!” 

Silence fell over the camp as ice water flooded Hakoda’s veins. The woman dug her fingers into his shirt, yanking him to his feet, burning fingers still pressed against the inside of his jaw. There would definitely be blisters there tomorrow, if he would even still be alive tomorrow. 

Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, Sokka and Toph were still standing in the middle of everything, surrounded by a ring of limp bodies. Maybe they were unconscious. Maybe they were dead. Hakoda couldn’t tell how much of the blood splattered over the campsite was Sokka and Toph’s. 

Sokka was still clutching his boomerang and his knife, and a cycling cone of sand was whipping around Toph’s feet. Both of them had their backs to one another, their lips bared in snarls. 

The woman’s fingers pressed deeper into his jaw, and Hakoda winced. “Drop your weapons,” she said again, almost cheerfully. “And you won’t have to clean up a pile of burning flesh.”

 _Oh,_ Hakoda realized. _She’s addressing them specifically._

He could almost see why. Throughout the campsite were his soldiers, backed into corners or already subdued. But the Fire Nation soldiers forming a loose ring around Sokka and Toph were eyeing them like they were feral polar beardogs. Swords drawn, hands full of flames, eyeing them like they were the most dangerous things in the world. 

“Sir,” one of them said nervously, bleeding profusely from a heavy gash of his forearm. “I think these are-”

“I know,” the woman said. “I’ll admit that when I realized we had an opportunity to take the Southern Water Tribe fleet, I didn’t think we would also be getting the late Avatar’s companions.”

Something flashed over Sokka’s face, brief and indescribably ugly. Then it was gone, and Sokka was smiling congenially. He clapped a bloody hand over his heart and said, “Aww. You know us?”

“The wanted posters were not the best likeness, but they were close enough,” the woman responded coolly.

“Wow,” Toph said, her voice dripping with faux happiness. “You hear that, Sokka? We’re wanted. Such a nice feeling.” The sand picked up speed a little, whistling ominously, and the soldier nearest to her flinched back. 

The woman laughed, her fingers growing even more painfully hot against Hakoda’s jaw. “You’re hilarious. Surrender. Now.”

Hakoda took a hesitant breath, and was met with smoky air.

Sokka eyed the woman, his face flickering between rage and concern. But there was something deeper there, something Hakoda needed more time to unravel. It was a puzzle, and Hakoda didn’t have all the pieces, so he was stuck running his fingers over the gaps in the picture, trying to figure out what was making Sokka look so carefully like he was up to something. 

Sokka looked from Hakoda, to the woman, to Toph, and then back. And there was another piece of the puzzle, Hakoda thought. Toph. What was she doing? The sand was still spinning, but she looked strangely vacant, as if something else were holding her attention, though what, Hakoda couldn’t tell. 

“Drop your weapons,” the woman barked again. 

Sokka eyed her, and beneath the meticulously crafted mask he was presenting, he looked almost disdainful. “Oh, come on,” he said conversationally, gesturing with his knife and grinning, blood dripping from the bone blade. “Can’t we talk about this?”

Then it clicked. 

_He’s stalling._

But stalling for what, Hakoda’s mind screamed. What was he waiting for?

For another few tense seconds, nothing happened. All movement in the campsite had halted. Those few of Hakoda’s soldiers that weren’t already pinned down stood in a tense face off with the Fire Nation soldiers, and the woman holding Hakoda, the commander, he assumed, stayed locked in her face off with the two children across from her. 

Then Toph made a strange noise, like a mix between a sigh and a snort. She dropped her hands, and the sand crashed to the shore. If Hakoda didn’t know better, he might say she was trying not to smile. 

That seemed to be what Sokka had been waiting for though, because he sighed dramatically and dropped both his knife and his boomerang to the sand, raising his bloody hands in surrender. 

Hakoda’s heart dropped into his stomach. If he had been debating fighting back before, it was out of the question now, with Sokka and Toph taken. He couldn’t let his son die, and he wouldn’t let Toph die either.

Hakoda could almost feel the woman grin. “Wonderful,” she said cheerfully. A hand met Hakoda’s shoulder, shoving him to the ground hard enough for his knees to go bloody. 

In the background, he heard Sokka shout. _Don’t do anything,_ Hakoda begged in his head. _By Tui and La, do not get yourself killed for me Sokka._

Almost immediately, hands were on him again, yanking him back and seizing his arms, and Hakoda’s eyes reached up again to find Sokka. 

One of the soldiers was yanking Toph forward by the wrists and clipping her into metal cuffs. Toph looked down at them, and started laughing uproariously, though Hakoda had no clue what could possibly be funny about this situation. 

The commander strode forward casually, sliding her sword from its sheath. Sokka held his ground, watching her approach with a vaguely resentful look on his face. The woman raised her sword, dropping it against Sokka’s collarbone. 

She tipped her head, looking down at him. Sokka raised his chin, glaring into her face. “You’re younger than I imagined,” she said. Her voice sounded, beneath all the confidence, confused, even a little angry.

Sokka’s eyes narrowed. “Older than your youngest troops,” he said coolly. “The new draft age. Fourteen, isn’t it?”

Her mouth pulled down into a frown. Now her voice truly was angry. “I never agreed to that.”

Sokka laughed, humorless. “Yeah, it seems no one did. Does anyone even have a say in the government in your country? You know, besides the rich and socially powerful. Does anyone have a say? Do you?”

She almost took a step back, something like uncertainty flashing over her face before determination slid back in. “It doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “The Fire Lord’s word is law.”

“Yeah,” Sokka said bitterly. “And what a lord he is. Congrats to him. Killed the Avatar, who was all of twelve years old. Oh, no, wait. He didn’t. His daughter did that. He hasn’t done anything, has he?”

The commander’s sword wavered. “It doesn’t matter,” she said again, less sure this time.

Sokka tipped his head at her, tired and resigned and furious all at once. “You’re fighting and dying and killing in the sake of a war he hasn’t raised a finger to help end,” Sokka said slowly, “and you think it doesn’t matter?” He shook his head, laughing bitterly. “And you all think you’re helping us.”

Finally, the woman seemed to pull up on her reserves of steel, straightening and pressing the tip of her sword against his throat. Her eyes narrowed. “Shut up,” she growled. “Your opinion means nothing. You’ve already lost.”

Sokka’s eyes crinkled with an oncoming smile, but his face stayed straight. He hummed, clicking his tongue. “Yeah, no,” he said decisively. “You’re wrong. We haven’t lost.”

The woman grinned. “And why is that?”

At this, Toph abandoned all attempts to contain herself, and fell over laughing. Sokka grinned, sharp-edged and furious and entirely vindictive. “Because,” he said. “You’re holding a sword to my throat. Which means you have just _royally_ pissed off my sister.”

The woman’s face blanched, color draining from her skin at an alarming rate. She whipped around, following Sokka’s line of vision. Hakoda’s neck snapped around so fast he got whiplash. 

But through the pain arcing up and down his spine, he could see Katara, standing ankle deep in the water out from the shoreline. Her eyes met the commander’s, and her face transformed. A terrifying grin spread from one end of her mouth to the other, bared teeth and raw-edged glee and a kind of crazed rage that made her look like a force of nature itself. More hurricane than human.

Katara’s grin was that of a barracuda, a koishark, a tsunami bearing down on the shore. It was the grin of a predator closing in on its prey. The grin of a soldier walking into a fight they knew they were going to win.

Katara tipped her head to the side, spreading her hands. The water hissed menacingly over the sand, and Katara’s grin grew into something to make men cower and flee. “Care to dance?” she purred.

One of the men shouted, and Hakoda thought he must either be recklessly brave or mind-numbingly stupid. Nothing in the world could have convinced Hakoda to run towards a firebender grinning at him like that, and he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why this man thought it was a good idea.

It was not a good idea. 

The soldier drew his sword, and raised a hand, presumably to shoot a burst of flames. He was fast. Katara was faster.

The grin dropped from her face in a millisecond, morphing into a snarl just as terrifying. She swung backwards, deeper into the water, spinning in a quick circle, her hands flying out and then back in, shoving out at the man with flat palms. And the water followed. 

A stream of water shot up from the ocean, curling out and snapping back in, plowing up over the shore and slamming into the soldier with the force of a rampaging komodorhino. 

He flew backwards, drenched, and hit the shore hard enough to plow a groove into the sand two feet deep. Soldiers around the campsite yelled, bringing up fists or swords or hands full of flames.

Katara laughed, vicious and vindictive and cold, cold, cold. She threw her hands up, and with a thunderous, crashing roar, ten thousand gallons of water leapt into the air.

The soldiers shouted, screaming and staggering back. For a split second, it was just Katara and the commander, staring each other down. 

Then the woman let out a string of curse words, and began to shout, “Retreat!” 

Katara brought her hands down, and the ocean followed. 

If Hakoda had thought Toph’s sand wall had been impressive, it was nothing compared to this. Hakoda threw his arms up to guard his face and head and neck. The water came crashing down, and parted around him. 

The soldiers that had been clutching his arms crumpled to the sand through the suddenly gritty water. Hakoda snapped around to look, but caught only a glimpse of them before the water roared again, yanking them away into the gray-blue water. 

A rumbling crashing came from all around him. Hakoda’s head shot up, but he couldn’t clear the top of the water all around him. The water stalled, swirling in languid coils thick with sand. And then it switched directions, ripping back down the beach to smash back into the ocean. Through the murk, Hakoda saw at least three soldiers in red go speeding by, yanked out by the sudden riptide.

The last of the water drained away, emptying back into the ocean, and Hakoda could suddenly see again. More than half of the Fire Nation soldiers were several ship lengths out in the ocean, spluttering and cursing and trying desperately to swim with their armor. And as for the rest…

The last of the water receded, and Toph let out a maniacal cackle. She spun her hands, and her cuffs snapped apart with a screeching wrench. She threw her hands up and the muddy shore followed, shooting up into the air and crashing down on the heads of the men near her. 

Sokka threw an elbow back into the gut of the soldier nearest him, yanking his sword from his hand and smashing him over the head with the pommel.

Toph dug her feet into the ground, and shoved her hands down at the ground in a sharp motion. With a yelp and an ominous slurping sound, ten men were sucked down into the sand up to their armpits. 

Katara charged up the beach, wet from head to toe and sloshing water everywhere. “You’re late,” Sokka said, grinning at her.

“I hate you,” Katara said, grinning back at him. She held out a hand, and Sokka gasped loudly, seizing the gleaming metal sitting on it. 

“Boomerang!” he cheered. He grinned at Katara. “I take it back, all the bitterness. You’re the best.”

Katara flicked her hand, and water dislodged from the sand, flying up and solidifying in her hand. She handed Sokka the ice knife, and said, “I know.”

Without another word, the three of them spun around, back to back, and then charged in three different directions.

Hakoda stood in shock, and watched.

Logically, Hakoda had known that his children and their friends had become seasoned fighters, tried and tested in battle against some of the best the Fire Nation had to offer. But knowing it and watching it were two very different things.

It was one thing to know that Sokka had made the plans that had taken down a drill designed and capable of breaking Ba Sing Se’s walls. It was another to watch Sokka take down a man with a boomerang while slicing through the ankle of another, and popping up without a scratch.

It was one thing to know that Toph had wrecked dozens of men at a time before. It was another to watch her throw hunks of stone with terrifying precision, knocking out multiple men at once with ease.

It was one thing to know that Katara was a master waterbender. It was another to watch her spin half a dozen streams of water at once, freezing soldiers left and right in blocks of ice, and smashing the others down. 

The few men of Hakoda’s that were still up and clutching weapons tried to jump in to help a few times, but after they narrowly avoided getting smashed by a hunk of rock or smacked by a water whip, they seemed to all come to the conclusion that maybe it was better to just stay out of the way and let the insane children handle it. 

All told, it took maybe ten minutes. It was obvious to Hakoda now that both Toph and Sokka had been stalling frantically to give Katara enough time to get there. And if he had thought Sokka and Toph fighting together was impressive, it was nothing compared to adding Katara to the mix. 

The three of them seemed to somehow always know what the others were about to do, and the few times they didn’t, all it took was a few shouted words to warn them. They played off each other’s moves, slipping through the gaps and protecting each other’s backs and generally fighting as if they had been doing this together for years. 

Hakoda just watched. Without a weapon, he would have to spend time getting one, but he had already learned from his men that really it was just better to stay out of the blast radius. So he watched.

(A thousand years ago, he had held Katara and Sokka, tiny and squabbling and still laughing, and he had said, _I will always protect you,_ truth down to his aching bones. 

Sokka had looked up at him, serious, and said, _Forever?_

 _And ever, and ever, and ever?_ Katara had chorused, grinning at her brother and smiling at Hakoda, wide, adoring eyes more beautiful than the sea. 

Kya had laughed in the background, but Hakoda had stared down at his two children, and smiled, and said, _Forever and ever and ever._ And it was true, every bit of it. He would always protect them, because they would always be the most important things to him in any world. He would protect them, forever and ever and ever.)

(Hakoda stood on a beach, and watched his children and their friend take on a small army without flinching, and he didn’t need to protect them forever and ever and ever. They didn’t need it. He should be glad about that. Why wasn’t he glad about that?) 

Sokka smashed the last man over the head with a sword he had somehow produced, and whipped around, looking for the next person to fight, only to find Toph and Katara standing in the middle of the chaos, virtually unscathed. He sighed, his shoulders slumping. He walked over to them slowly, and they did the same, the three of them meeting in the middle, and dropping onto the sand together, breathing heavily. 

“Well,” Toph said, her words slow through her heavy breathing. “That went well.”

Sokka leaned over and smacked Katara’s shoulder lightly. “What took you so long?”

Katara sighed, wiping a hand down her face to clear away some of the sand. “I had to move Aang. I didn’t want him near the fighting. Once we get into it, well.” She raised her hands, gesturing at the campsite. 

Toph flopped backwards, closing her eyes and breathing through her mouth. “She has a point,” she said. 

Sokka nodded, panting. “Yeah, that makes sense. Though I want it on the record that you two are the destructive ones.”

“Um,” said a sudden voice. Katara and Sokka’s heads both turned to face Bato, who was staring at them in slight shock. 

“Yeah?” Katara asked tiredly. 

“Did we miss someone?” Sokka asked, craning his neck to peer around the campsite. 

Hakoda looked around, following Sokka’s gaze. A few Fire Nation soldiers were splayed out over the ground, bleeding out or already dead, though Hakoda had no clue how many of those belonged to his men, and how many belonged to Sokka, Toph, and Katara. 

The rest of the soldiers were stuck up to their necks in sand, encased in startling amounts of ice, or unconscious on the ground. The three of them had been thorough. 

“No,” Bato said, regaining his sense. “You didn’t miss anyone. But I’m thinking we should move on. Find another campsite.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a humorless smile. “You three kind of tore this one to pieces.”

“Not me,” Sokka said. He pointed at Toph and Katara. “Blame them.”

Katara rolled her eyes, flicking water at him from her fingertips. Toph flipped him off without picking herself up from where she was sprawled over the ground. 

But Katara said, “You’re probably right,” to Bato. She groaned, dropping her face in her hands. “And now we have to pack.”

“Speak for yourselves,” Toph said idly. “I’m already packed.”

“Great,” Katara said. “You can help me then.”

Toph frowned. “No thanks.”

Katara sighed. “I was in the middle of a healing session when I heard the shouting. I have to clean up that and collect all my stuff. I just need some help getting all of it. Please?”

Toph’s frown softened, and after a second she sighed. 

Hakoda wasn’t sure what did it. Maybe it was how truly, bone-deep exhausted Katara sounded. Maybe it was the reminder of Aang, comatose. Maybe it was the knowledge that was haunting all of them, Katara working herself to the bone for a boy who might not wake up anyway. Maybe it was just that, beneath all the prickly exterior, Toph really did love Katara. 

But whatever it was, Toph sighed, and said, “Fine. Let’s do it, before I change my mind.”

Katara let out a tired smile, a breath escaping her as she closed her eyes. She sat there, digging her fingers into the sand and doing nothing but breathing. Then she opened her eyes and pushed herself to her feet. She leaned over, offering both Sokka and Toph a hand. 

Sokka seized Katara’s hand gratefully and pulled himself to his feet with a groan. He looked at her, and said, “You got your tent?”

Katara nodded, smiling at him past her drooping eyelids. 

Toph took Katara’s hand. She didn’t seem to use it to get up, but when she and Katara started back towards the tent, she didn’t let go. 

Hakoda watched them go. He swallowed the sand attempting to rise up in his throat, and shook his head. He turned back to his men, standing around the campsite and still staring in open astonishment at the subdued patrol. 

Hakoda cleared his throat loudly, and most of them turned around immediately to look at him. “Get packed,” he called over the campsite. “We’re leaving.” 

A few of the men nodded, and most of them peeled away. 

Bato walked over to Hakoda, eyeing him suspiciously. “Hakoda,” he asked. “Are you okay?”

He might have been talking about how Hakoda was held hostage to get his own son and his son’s friend to drop their weapons. He might have been inquiring as to Hakoda’s physical health. But it was Bato, so it was probably neither of those things. Which meant it was a question that Hakoda wasn’t sure he had an answer to. 

Hakoda took a slow breath in, and the pain on his jaw flared in time with the sand oceans resurfacing in his lungs. Was he okay? 

It had been a long time since anyone had asked him if he was okay in more than a strictly physical sense. 

After they had had to leave Bato behind, it had been him and Hei Min, and she had asked him sometimes. But then Hei Min had left, and it was just Hakoda and his men left to fight alone, and they didn’t have time for Hakoda to be wondering about things like whether or not he was okay.

Katara asked Sokka and Toph if they were okay at least five times a day, and the answers were usually different. She had never asked Hakoda if he was okay. Hakoda understood that. She was too busy. She was trying to keep her friend alive, and she was trying to keep Toph from snarling at Sokka, and she was trying to hold herself together by holding her friends together. 

Hakoda’s men didn’t have the time, and Katara didn’t have the time, and Hakoda didn’t have the time. But Bato had a way of making time for things like these, and Bato had always been more than just another one of Hakoda’s men. 

Was he okay? His children were back. They were alive and healthy and capable of protecting themselves. He had everything that he had wanted for the past two years. He should be okay.

(Blood flashed behind his eyes, and screaming, and ash over snow. Dreaming of running through an icy labyrinth, laughter he could never reach waiting around the corner. _Forever and ever_ crashing into images of Katara and Sokka, fierce and confident and more powerful than he had ever been. An image. Three silhouettes against a foggy sky, and the bitterness that had never quite left his tongue from admitting that they didn’t need him. 

He should be okay. But was he?)

“Yeah,” he told Bato, though it felt like chewing ash. “I’m okay.”

Bato raised an eyebrow, his mouth pulling down into a frown. “Alright,” he said, in his tone of voice that meant _you’re a horrible liar but I’m not going to call you on it right now._

He clapped Hakoda on the shoulder, a little more gently than usual, and said, “Come on. Your tent is going to be a pain in the ass to pack.”

Hakoda gave him a wry smile. It only felt a little fake. 

“No worse than yours,” he shot back. “You’ve got maps everywhere, and we’re going to have to roll them up one at a time.”

“Yeah,” Bato laughed. “But my mess is productive. You have no excuse. You’re just a clothes slob.”

Hakoda shoved Bato away, laughing. “Just because you’re right doesn’t mean you have to rub it in. Now go get your stuff together you pest.”

“Right,” Bato muttered, moving away. “Because _I’m_ the pest in this relationship.”

Hakoda shook his head, grinning after his friend. He walked over to his tent, and slid in. Once the flap had closed behind him, he closed his eyes. The smile slipped off his face, and he sat down on the floor, cupping his forehead in one hand and breathing deeply. 

Katara’s barracuda smile flashed behind his eyes. Sokka casually gesturing with fingers covered in blood not his own. Sand rising unbidden from his lungs, no rain in sight. Bato’s concerned frown, _Are you okay?_

In his experience, it’s always easier to be honest alone. No one to judge you but yourself. Hakoda took a shuddering breath, and the honesty came. 

_I don’t know._

\--

It took about seven hours to clean up the campsite, dodging dead bodies and stepping around the soldiers still encased in ice or sand. Every hour or so Katara and Toph came back out, resinking or refreezing the men, joking with each other the whole time.

Sokka, Katara and Toph packed up in a little under forty minutes. When Hakoda asked how they were so efficient, Sokka shrugged casually and said, “I mean, we’re kind of constantly on the run. We had to be good at packing up fast.” He grinned over at Katara then, saying, “Remember Omashu?”

Katara groaned. “Don’t remind me about Omashu. That memory is not a fun one.”

“Oh, come on,” Sokka said teasingly. “You’re telling me you didn’t enjoy sailing off multiple roofs?”

Katara shot him an unimpressed look, a smile tugging at the edge of her lips. “Says the one who was screaming like a baby the whole time.”

Hakoda swallowed. “I’m going to go work on packing up the weapons,” he said, hoping his words didn’t sound as choked as they felt caught in his chest. 

“Need some help?” Sokka offered. His blue eyes were wide, sparkling. If not happy, then at least okay. His face looked too old. 

“No,” Hakoda said. “I’ve got this. Uteji should already be working on it anyway.”

Selfish as it was, Hakoda didn’t want to spend more time with Sokka. Not right now, with Sokka chattering away happily to distract himself. Not when every other word from Sokka’s mouth was just another painful reminder of two whole years that he had missed. 

Hakoda just needed a breather. It would be good for him. But it almost wasn’t worth it for the way Sokka deflated. It almost wasn’t worth it for the way Katara saw Sokka, and turned her head to shoot him a halfhearted glare from the corner of her eye. 

Almost. 

Katara turned back to Sokka, dropping a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Hauki already said we could help him wrap up the tents. He said something about some jerky if we helped him.”

Sokka gasped, immediately brightening. 

Hakoda turned away and started for the boat where they kept the extra weapons that would need securing, very firmly not thinking about the bitter taste it always left on his tongue when they did something that seemed like second nature. Something that he didn’t know. 

He helped Uteji secure the weapons, and very firmly didn’t wonder about how much of them he even knew anymore.

When they were finally done packing up camp, Hakoda walked up to the three kids, lying in a pile of tangled limbs like sealotter pups. A smile tugged at his mouth as he took note of Sokka idly playing with Katara’s hair. 

Some things never changed. Maybe Hakoda still knew more of them than he thought.

“Well,” he said to them, smiling. “I didn’t know there were baby sealotters this far north. Very shocking.”

Sokka snorted. Katara let out a muffled giggle, smacking Toph’s foot out of her face. Toph lifted her foot and deliberately dropped it back into Katara’s face. Katara shook her head, smiling. She took Toph’s foot, and tucked it under her chin. She looked happier than Hakoda had seen her since they reunited. 

“Are we ready to go?” Sokka asked without looking up from where he was turning Katara’s hair into dozens of tiny braids. 

“Nooo,” Toph groaned. “I just got comfy.” As if to emphasize her point, she wiggled her butt, burrowing further into the sand. 

Katara said, “And I’m sure you’ll find a way to end up lying on both of us again if we move.” She said it as if she were trying to make it sound judgemental, but she was failing. There was no masking the smile in her voice. 

Hakoda found himself wondering, again, what Toph had done to earn smiles within smiles and love that never stopped coming.

(He found himself wondering, again, what he had done to stop deserving the same.) 

“Yes,” he said. “We’re ready to go.”

Hakoda stopped then, his heart stuttering nervously. He opened and closed his mouth, searching for the words. Trying and failing to find the question he wanted to ask, too lost between all the other questions that he would never ask. Could never ask.

Toph raised her head up, squinting at him. “What’s wrong with you?” she said bluntly. “Why are you freaking out?”

That got both Katara and Sokka’s attention. Katara’s eyes opened, and she frowned at him, her expression going concerned in a way it hadn’t recently. Sokka’s attention finally lifted from the multitude of braids he was inserting into Katara’s hair. 

“Hey,” Sokka asked. “What do you want to ask us?”

Despite himself, Hakoda’s face split in a smile. “How did you know I wanted to ask you something?”

Katara hummed. “It’s the eyebrows,” she decided.

Hakoda felt the eyebrows in question raise. “What?” he laughed.

“No,” Sokka said. “She’s right. It’s the eyebrows.” He frowned, and then added, “And the mouth.”

Katara nodded. “Your eyebrows pull down, but only at the very front,” she said knowingly. “And your mouth kind of… flattens out. Like you don’t know what to do with it.”

Sokka grinned, bumping Katara’s shoulder. “Wonder where you got it from,” he told her teasingly. 

Katara smacked him. “I do not do that.”

“Yes, you do,” Toph said. “I can’t even see, and I know Sokka’s right.”

Katara frowned, but before she could begin to argue again, Hakoda cleared his throat. Both Sokka and Katara turned towards him. Toph didn’t, but she did flatten one foot against the sand. 

_ You have fought in battles,  _ Hakoda scolded himself.  _ You have fought in a war. You have talked down a furious Hei Min. You have confronted Kya in the height of her sleep-deprivation rage. You have no reason to be scared of your own children. _

Predictably, his emotions did not listen to him. 

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. When he opened them again, Sokka and Katara were still watching him expectantly. Really, the two of them looked so similar it was a little scary. 

“I was wondering,” he said slowly, “if you all are staying with us now, or if you’re splitting off.”

Sokka and Katara’s faces did an eerily similar flickering, emotions too fast for Hakoda to untangle. They exchanged looks. Sokka’s nose wrinkled. Katara huffed a little, her eyebrows just barely pulling down. Toph snorted, kicking Katara’s side.

Hakoda watched, waiting. Sokka and Katara had always had the strange ability to speak to each other without words. Hakoda had long since given up on trying to understand it. And apparently Toph was in on it now too. Wonderful.

It was another ten seconds before Katara sighed, shaking her head. Sokka turned back to Hakoda, looking distinctly pleased. 

Hakoda raised an eyebrow. “Can i assume that you’ve come to a decision with your strange telepathy?”

“Yes, yes you can,” Sokka said cheerfully. 

“We’re going to stay with the fleet, at least until Aang wakes up, or until we decide we need to go,” Katara said. “If that’s okay with you,” she added.

“It’s not like we have anywhere we’ve got to be,” Toph said.   
“Besides,” Sokka said, a little hesitantly. “We, well… It’s kind of…” He huffed, turning to Katara and poking her arm. “You do it,” he said grumpily. “I suck at words.”

Katara rolled her eyes, shoving his hand away. But her movements were nothing if not fond. “What Sokka is failing so badly at saying,” Katara said, “is that, well, it’s been a long time.” She looked up at him, and her eyes met Hakoda’s. 

Hakod tried, again, to untangle the emotions hidden behind her eyes when she looked at him. Again, he failed. He didn’t know where it came from, the spite and the anger and the misery. 

If Hakoda knew anything, it was that Katara gave love, and gave it, and gave it, even when the people she was giving it to probably didn’t deserve it. And Hakoda knew that right now she was stuck. That a part of her would always be trapped at the Avatar’s bedside for as long as he lay there. 

Hakoda couldn’t untangle all the mixed feelings Katara kept bleeding everywhere from wounds he couldn’t see. But he knew that even if she snarled and spat and speared him under her rage with every other glare, she loved him. She was stronger than he was, in that respect. (She was stronger than he was in most respects.)

Katara huffed out, and all the mixed feelings that Hakoda had earned with every second he was gone fell to the wayside, and when she looked at him it was only with a grudging love. (Not that Hakoda deserved it.)

“We don’t want to leave yet. We don’t have anywhere to go really, but even if we did, I don’t think we would. We love you. And… and we missed you.”

Hakoda let out a slow breath that he hadn’t known he had been holding, and he smiled.

\--

Katara, Sokka, and Toph ended up in Hakoda’s boat. Erumiq, Tarin, and Unek had to be moved out of the boat to make room, but they were understanding about it. They had children back home. They knew. 

And it didn’t hurt that everyone was kind of everyone’s kid in their tribe. Even if it had been a few years, there wasn’t a single one of Hakoda’s men who wouldn’t die for Sokka or Katara in an instant.

Appa was skimming along between two boats with a tarp stretched between them. If the attack on the beach had taught the Water Tribe men anything, it was that Sokka hadn’t been kidding when he said people knew them. Better safe than sorry, even if the world did think Aang was dead. 

They were a few hours out onto the sea when Tanuk saw it. A Fire Nation ship, moving out over the horizon. 

When Tanuk came up to him, eyes grim, Hakoda had thought it might be a fleet. But no, it was just one ship. “Why are we concerned about it?” he asked Tanuk. “It won’t be stupid enough to attack a whole fleet.”

“I’m not sure it matters,” Ukate said, squinting through their spyglass at the ship. “That number on the side. The ship is supposed to be stationed in the South Yellow Sea.”

Hakoda, Bato and Tanuk blinked at him. Ukate pulled away from the spyglass. 

“What?” Bato asked.

Ukate pulled back, his shoulders hunching up. “What?” he said defensively. “I started learning where some fleets should be stationed. It seemed like it might be useful.”

Sokka, who had been sitting nearby, perked up. “That does sound useful,” he said eagerly. “Do you think you could teach me some?”

Ukate blinked. “Um,” he said, a little shocked. “Yeah, I mean, sure.” 

“Hey,” Tanuk said, pulled Ukate back from his shock. “Get back to the ship. Why does it matter that this one should be stationed in the South Yellow Sea?”

Ukate brightened. “That’s the good part,” he said cheerfully. “The South Yellow Sea is near Ba Sing Se. It’s a really long way to go for a ship, especially one like that.”

“One like that?” Bato asked.

“Yeah,” Ukate said. “That’s a ship designed for transporting cargo. They usually hang out in the middle of an entourage. There are normally at least a few other ships with cargo ships, to keep pirates and stuff away. One like that, kinda dinged up, far from where it should be, no entourage? I’m betting the commander did something they shouldn’t have, and they deserted.”

Sokka, who had been listening to this explanation, stood up, taking the spyglass from Ukate and looking out at the ship. “Huh,” he said. 

Sokka pulled the spyglass away from his face, and stared out over the waves at the ship. His eyes were narrowed, his lips pursed. It was the look he always used to get before employing a surprisingly effective tactic in snowball fights. But Hakoda was willing to bet that this would be more important than a snowball fight.

Bato seemed to have come to the same conclusion. “Sokka,” he said, staring at the younger boy. “Is everything okay?”

Sokka gave him no answer. He just kept staring out over the waves, something dawning in his eyes. He spun around to face Toph, who in all of this, hadn’t moved from where she laid sprawled out over the deck. “Toph,” he said. “Go get Katara.”

Toph wrinkled her nose at him. “You do it, lazy.”

Sokka rolled his eyes. “Please?” he said. 

Toph didn’t move.

Sokka sighed. “My plan involves both of you, and if it works, you’ll get to smack people.”  
Toph leapt to her feet. She ran over to the hatch to below deck, shouting, “Sugar Queen! Time to join the land of the not-stressing!”

Sokka rolled his eyes again, turning back to the ship on the horizon.

“What are you up to?” Tanuk said suspiciously. 

Sokka grinned at him. “Hopefully you’ll see.”

Barely a minute later, Toph and Katara came back up onto the deck, walking over to Sokka. “What is it?” Katara asked him. Her fingertips were still faintly blue. She had been doing a healing session then.

Sokka spun around, already grinning at her. “Sounding board.” 

Katara straightened, understanding flooding her eyes, though it meant nothing to Hakoda. 

“Alright,” she said. “Hit me.”

Sokka grinned at her, spreading his hands. “What’s the best place to hide a shell?”

Bato gave Hakoda a look like,  _ Your children are bonkers.  _ Hakoda already knew that, thank you very much.

Katara, to her credit, didn’t even flinch at the question that seemed related to absolutely nothing. Without hesitation, Katara said, “Toph’s armpit.”

Sokka froze, his mouth half open. It was obviously not the answer he had expected. 

Bato gave Hakoda another look, as if to say,  _ See? Bonkers.  _

Hakoda didn’t give him a look in response. He was too busy staring at Katara.

“ _ What?”  _ Sokka asked.

Katara shrugged. “I’m just saying,” she said casually. “No one would look there. Both the armpit and Toph are too scary.”

Toph grinned, snickering. “I would be offended if that statement weren’t both hilarious and true.”

Sokka shook his head. “I’m going to ignore that you said that, and laugh about it later.  _ Anyway,  _ you’re wrong. The best place to hide a shell is…” He paused dramatically, grinning at them. Katara and Toph stared back, clearly unimpressed. 

“A beach full of shells!” Sokka said. 

Katara and Toph exchanged looks. Toph couldn’t even see Katara’s face. What was the point? Maybe she could just sense the shared judgement. 

“Think about it!” Sokka cried, undeterred by his friends’ impassiveness. “Make the shell look like every other shell on the beach, and drop it in, and you could spend a thousand years looking for it, and never find it again.”

Hakoda was still lost. But Katara and Toph both froze, something clicking in their expressions. They spun around to face Sokka. 

“You think it would work?” Katara asked.

Sokka grinned. “I don’t see why not.”

“Hell yes,” Toph said, grinning in that way that made her look like a sealshark. “Let’s make some chaos.”

Katara rolled her eyes, smiling. “Alright, you little gremlin,” she said fondly.

“Excuse me?” Tanuk said, waving his hand between the children. “Could someone please explain to those of us not possessed by freaky telepathy what in Tui’s name you’re talking about?”

All three of them turned to the adults, wearing identical grins. “You’re about to get initiated into our way of solving problems,” Sokka said. 

“With lots of chaos and no discernable plan?” Bato said dryly.

Sokka frowned. “That’s mean. Just because the plans always go off the rails doesn’t mean we don’t have any.” Then he immediately perked back up again. Grinning furiously, he glanced back at Toph and Katara. In eerie unison, all three of their heads turned out over the horizon. And fixed on the boat in the distance.

“How would you all feel,” Sokka said, “about stealing a boat?”

\---

Stealing the boat was startlingly easy. Hakoda had been expecting them to have to pull up, dock the boat, etc., etc. But when he mentioned that to Sokka, his son burst out laughing, leaning against the boat rail and howling until he was crying. When he finally stopped, he wiped away tears, and then said, “Well, that’s hilarious, but, consider-” He grinned at Hakoda, looking like a wolf. “-You have a waterbender now.”

Which was all well and good, except for the fact that Hakoda had no idea how to use a waterbender in battle. Even Toph knew better than him how to use Katara’s talents.

(And how sad was it that the chief of the Southern Water Tribe didn’t know how to use a waterbender in battle?)

In the end, Hakoda gave up, and just let Sokka run the mission. Which he did with terrifying competency. 

Except really, his plan only involved Katara, Toph, and a small team of boats as a distraction. Which Hakoda might have argued, if it hadn’t worked flawlessly. 

Tanuk led the fastest of the boats to skim around the left side of the huge boat, while Katara and Toph, on an ice float, shot up to the boat on the right side. 

From the distance they were at, Hakoda couldn’t see much without the spyglass, but even he could see the metal of the ship tear like wet paper, allowing water to pour into the hold of the ship. 

Even if Toph hated him, Hakoda had to admit, her metalbending was as useful as it was terrifying. And it was plenty terrifying.

Sokka had called it the Botch-and-Watch plan. Katara had rolled her eyes at that and called it the Evacuation plan. 

Hakoda had to give it to the Fire Nation. If they were nothing else, they were organized. It only took them twenty minutes to get what Hakoda assumed was the whole crew onto the liferafts, and begin sailing away.

Everyone in the Water Tribe fleet stood up on the deck, watching with bated breath. They knew what came next, or what was supposed to come next. Katara had told Sokka she could do it, even tired as she was, but Hakoda couldn’t quite make himself believe it. He would when he saw it.

The ship was already three-quarters of the way buried in the sea, and sinking fast. Hakoda was measuring the sinking by how much of the mast he could see.

It kept sinking. And sinking. And sinking. 

And then Ukate whispered, “ _ Foavaeb.” _

“What?” Hauki said loudly.

“ _ Foavaeb,”  _ Ukate repeated in a hushed, awed voice. “I don’t believe it.” He pulled away from the spyglass to look at them, eyes wide. “She’s doing it,” he said, awed.

Hakoda’s eyes napped back to the ship. And… Tui and La. Ukate was right. She was doing it. 

As he watched, the ship slid to a sluggish stop in its descent. And began to rise out of the waves.

A deafening chorus of cheers rolled out from all the decks as the men started shouting and jumping, clapping each other’s shoulders and roaring in excitement. 

Hakoda watched. The ship pulled up, and up, and up, until the gash in the hull was visible. The water roared out, too fast and too smooth to be natural. 

It was almost five minutes before the flow of the water eased, trickling to a stop. In the whole time, Hakoda never moved from his spot by the rail of the deck, watching. Neither did Bato. He wondered if anyone else felt the heaviness sitting low in his stomach. The absence of the children he once knew.

The water eased, the boat bobbing uncertainly on the surface of the water. The gash in the hull mended itself, metal shoved up like a crumpled glove pulling back down and knitting back together. The unnatural crests of water that had been holding the gash away from the waves eased down, placing the boat back into the water. 

An unnatural curl of water rose from the sea, snaking up to the deck of the ship, carrying two tiny figures with it. They hit the deck, and the water fell back into the sea. 

Another round of cheers echoed from the decks of Hakoda’s ships. This time, he allowed himself to smile a little bit, even if it made the skin around his eyes go tight. 

It didn’t take long to pull the boats up to the side of the ship, and with Toph helping, it didn’t take long to stow them in the mostly empty cargo hold either. 

The ship was more than big enough for them, even with Appa. Katara spent the first hour and a half walking through the ship, gesturing with huge sweeps of her arms at the water still laying in puddles throughout the ship. Every twenty minutes or so, she would walk up to the deck, arms outstretched, a huge twisting stream of water flowing through the air behind her, and she would dump it over the deck.

Every time Katara waterbent, almost everyone close enough stopped what they were doing to watch. After enough glaring from Toph and incidents in which someone who had been staring too blatantly tripped as the deck shifted unnaturally under them, they at least did it a little subtly. But they still watched. 

They had seen earthbending before, but besides those who remembered benders from before the raids, and faint memories of Katara moving little puddles, they had never seen waterbending.

While Katara cleared out the water left in the ship, Toph smashed open the metal crates of cargo left in the ship and inspected them, and Sokka helped with the other men unloading the Water Tribe boats. 

By the end of the day, everyone was wiped out, but Katara was bone-deep exhausted, and showing it in every motion. Which was maybe why, when Hakoda sat down on the deck, she came over and dropped down next to him, leaning into his side. She was just too tired to be mad at him.

Hakoda wasn’t complaining, even if it made him feel a little queasy, like he hadn’t earned it. But it sung too strongly of nights when he and Kya had sat down, and Katara and Sokka had wiggled up in between them even though they should have been in bed, and Hakoda would tell stories or Kya would sing, and both Katara and Sokka would fall asleep right there on top of them. If he closed his eyes, Hakoda could almost hear Kya’s voice. Her laughter. Never so far away.

Katara let out a slow breath, deflating against him, and he was pulled back to the now. The now was different. But if he didn’t focus on everything that felt like swallowing hot embers, it was just as nice.

Hakoda wound a hesitant arm around her shoulder, waiting for her to frown or scowl or shoot him with a comment just a little too barbed, like was all too prone to lately. But she didn’t. She just leaned further into him, and mumbled, “That was not fun.”

Hakoda smiled. “Which part?” he said softly. “Fighting off a small army, raising a boat out of the ocean, pulling all of the water out of said boat, or dealing with Sokka’s jokes?”

“Yes,” Katara grumbled, burrowing further into him.

Hakoda laughed, a sudden, bursting thing, and he didn’t think it was his imagination that she smiled a little bit. He squeezed her shoulders, and riding on the high of an interaction that felt like what it all used to be, before his courage could abandon him, he said, “Do you remember when you were little?”

Katara’s head raised to look at him, one of her eyebrows rising above her tired eyes. “You’re going to need to be a little more specific than that,” she said, a smile tugging at the edges of her voice. “Because,  _ when you were little,  _ depending on the definition, could quite possibly entail my entire natural life up to this very moment.”

Hakoda rolled his eyes, smiling. “I mean, when you were six or seven. Just starting to get into waterbending.It was more waterbending than I had seen in my whole life, and you were just… shifting around little puddles. Sometimes throwing snow at Sokka.”

“She still does that,” Sokka said softly, sliding up on his other side. He grinned at his sister. “Now it’s just a lot more snow.”

Hakoda offered Sokka an arm, and Sokka slid willingly into his other side. “That’s what I mean,” Hakoda said with a smile. “You’ve come a long way from the little girl moving puddles around.”

Katara sighed. She looked down at her hands, a bittersweet smile crossing her face. “I know I have. It feels like a million years ago but also no time at all since I was struggling even to do a water whip. I’ve come so far and it… It still doesn’t feel like enough.”

Hakoda closed his eyes. He knew what she meant, even if he didn’t at the same time. All the waterbending in the world wouldn’t be able to change the past. All the waterbending in the world couldn’t wake the Avatar back up to what he had been before he fell asleep. 

Sokka let out a tired sigh that vibrated in Hakoda’s chest and said, “Nothing will ever feel like enough. Not here. Not now. Not with what we’re doing. Because enough would be everything that is wrong never happening. Enough would be everyone growing up normal, and happy. Enough would be our biggest problem being how to tell someone we love them. And nothing we do can fix the past. We’ll never be enough for everything that we want. All we can do is what we can. And if what we can do is make a difference, then, Katara, you are more than enough. For anyone, in any world.”

Katara let out a heavy sigh, leaning into Hakoda’s side and closing her eyes. “I know,” she said. “But it doesn’t change how I feel. It doesn’t change the fact that I still want things to be better than I can make them. I know I can’t. I’m just one person. But if I aim to fix everything, and fall a little short, haven’t I still fixed more than someone who aimed to fix a little, and fell short? I just… I still think it matters. Just like I think everyone matters.”

Sokka let out a tired breath, slumping into Hakoda’s side. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Maybe we’re both right.”

Hakoda sat there, reeling in the wake of his children’s musings, deeper than some philosophers ever thought. He took a shuddering breath, closing his eyes and very firmly not crying. War had given his children a heavy, terrible kind of wisdom.

He started speaking before he even really registered it, and then it was far too late, so he had to go through with it. “Well,” he said slowly. “Enough or not, whatever has happened and whatever will happen, I’m proud of you. Both of you.”

Katara took in a shaky breath, and laughed wetly. Sokka snorted, but it didn’t sound derisive so much as awed. Happy, in an exhausted way. 

“I know it probably doesn’t mean much,” Sokka said quietly, “but we’re proud of you too.”

Hakoda laughed, small and incredulous, and tried to breathe past the floodwaters rising suddenly within his throat. He leaned down, kissing Sokka’s forehead. “It means more than you could ever know,” he murmured. 

Katara dropped her head onto his shoulder, and Sokka leaned into him. Katara closed her eyes, and Hakoda felt his shirt begin to grow a little wet. Sokka stared out over the ocean, eyes hollow in a strange kind of way that was not hollow at all. 

Hakoda swallowed the floodwaters in his throat and his lungs, closing his eyes against the wind off the ocean and the tears that stung. He pulled his children closer. 

Two years. For two years their echoes had sat, cold and heavy, in his empty embrace. They didn’t fit the same in his arms as their echoes, clashing in a bittersweet kind of way. The people they used to be and the people they were now. The same but also different.

It wasn’t like he remembered it, exactly. It wasn’t even exactly like he had imagined it. But it was good. 

\---

Hakoda kept forgetting. He kept forgetting that things were different now. He kept forgetting that for some reason he could never quite pin down, Katara was deeply, truly, horribly furious with him.

Days kept passing and Katara’s patience with him grew shorter and shorter. It might not have hurt so much if Katara had been getting less patient with everyone. And she was. But it wasn’t like with him.

With everyone else, she was getting shorter. More direct, more irritated. But it was painfully obvious that she was trying, with them, at least. Trying not to take out her frustration and anger and crushing guilt on them. 

Sokka and Toph especially seemed exempt from this rage. With them, Katara seemed to swallow her senseless fury, and pour it back into herself while she helped them with whatever they needed. 

Hakoda knew it was her coping strategy. He knew it was unhealthy. He didn’t know how to help her. Mostly because he didn’t know how to interact with her without her turning snarly and quietly out of time and patience for him.

Sokka, Katara, and Toph had taken up residence in the same room as the Avatar’s unconscious body. Hakoda still didn’t know how they could do it. How they could sleep next to someone as good as dead.

(Though maybe that's why they did it. They didn’t know how much more time they might have, and they would take any part of him they were given, no matter how small.)

It all came to a head one night, Katara’s rage and Hakoda’s confusion and Toph’s quiet dislike of him and the Avatar’s continued sleep, one massive pain-filled cocktail to root up all the ugly, festering truths.

Toph and Sokka were up on the deck, engaged in a furious battle of cards. Hakoda asked if one of them could take dinner down to Katara. He wasn’t eager to do it, as she had been particularly short with him that day. 

But Toph said, “Pull up your big-boy panties and do it yourself,” at the same time Sokka said,  _ “Shhhhh!!!  _ I’m winning!” both of them without looking up from the cards.

This had, of course, sparked an argument over who was really winning, Sokka insisting he was on top, Toph shouting that he was “a dirty little liar! I’m crushing you!”

Hakoda looked down at the bowl cupped between his fingers, taking a deep breath. Surely it couldn’t be that bad. It would be okay. He would be in and out.

(He would not be in and out, and by the time all was said and done, he would be very much not okay.)

He walked down the deck, Toph and Sokka’s argument still drifting through the air. He weaved back and forth between his men, sitting or standing or moving across the deck. 

Bato caught his eye about halfway across. He raised an eyebrow. 

Hakoda held his gaze. He swallowed.

Bato’s face cleared, softening with understanding. He gave Hakoda a wry smile, nodding encouragingly.

Hakoda took a deep breath, straightening his spine. 

It was just Katara. Just his daughter, who laughed when Sokka made faces, and played with the other kids in the village, and never gave up. (Just Katara, who had fought a small army with hard eyes, and raised a ship from the ocean, and was never scared of him.)

He could do this. 

(He could not do this. But it was always easier to pretend like he could until it was all over.)

He walked down below deck, and took a left into the section of cabins. He stopped at the third door in the row. The door hung open, unnatural blue light curling around the gap in the door. Hakoda took a deep breath, and eased his way into the room.

A few lamps were lit, spread out over low tables near her, but most of the light in the room came from the brilliant blue glow wreathing Katara’s hands. Her hair was pulled back away from her face into a kind of interwoven bun that Hakoda was pretty sure he had seen Toph giving her earlier. Her eyes were fixed unflinchingly on the black gash in the Avatar’s back, her whole face glowing in the tinted light. 

As he watched, her lips flattened, and she pushed her hands closer down to his back. The water dipped lower, easing into the skin, lighting up his back from the inside. She let out a slow breath, and closed her eyes, curling her fingers in and out. Her arms had lit up from her fingertips to her elbows, and the shadows they cast over her face made her look far older than she was. 

He didn’t look at the Avatar, lying prone beside Katara’s kneeling form. Call him weak, but he didn’t like looking at the gash, the streaks of red and black, the pus that every so often Katara had to pull out. Every time he did look, it made him toe the line with retching, and if he puked all over the sterile environment, he thought Katara might actually kill him. And if Katara didn’t, Toph certainly would. 

It was easier to watch Katara, if only marginally, because even if she wasn't bleeding everywhere, everything about her reminded him that he had done something horribly wrong. 

Hakoda waited in the doorway for almost a minute before realizing that Katara wasn’t going to acknowledge him. But, then again, deep as she clearly was in the Avatar’s back, it was possible she hadn’t even noticed him yet.

He stepped forward, hesitantly. She didn’t open her eyes. Hakoda cleared his throat, and said quietly,  _ “Envuqi?”  _ When he still received no reply, he took another step and said, a bit louder, “Katara?”

Katara’s head snapped up, her eyes flying open. She shot him a glance from the corner of her eyes and said, “I’m busy.”

Only years of stubborness had Hakoda holding his ground at her stiff words. “Katara,” he said softly. “You’ve been at this for hours.”

This time, her head turned fully so she could glare at him. “I’m fine,” she said tightly. “I don’t need you worrying about me.”

Hakoda ground his jaw, and bit down the urge to snap back at her. “I know,” he said. “But I’m your father. It’s my job.”  
To his shock, instead of another barbed, acidic comment, Katara let out a harrowing laugh, and Hakoda felt his heart drop into his stomach. He knew, somehow, in some way, that comment had snapped something. It had crossed a line. 

Katara kept laughing, doubling over and clutching her stomach. She came back up, turning back around to face the Avatar’s back again. “Oh, and  _ such  _ a good job you’re doing with that,” she said, her voice fakely congratulatory. 

Hakoda felt something in his chest tighten, stretch and stretch and stretch. He forced it to not snap under the pressure. “Katara,” he tried again, and wasn’t completely sure he had kept his voice from coming out strangled. “You should take a break. Eat something. This isn’t healthy.”

Katara let out another chilling laugh, her eyes not moving from where they were hooked under the Avatar’s skin. “You don’t get to tell me what I should do. Not after everything.”

The thin something in his chest stretched. And stretched. And stretched. And with a screeching, howling shudder that he could feel in his bones, it snapped. 

He leaned down, dropping the bowl on a table. Hakoda straightened up again, to his full height, his chest burning red-hot, pulse pounding in his throat. “Alright,” he growled. “Fine. Explain it to me then. What is this  _ everything  _ you’re talking about? Because I can’t figure it out. So, please, Katara. Enlighten me.”

Somewhere in the part of his mind still clinging to some kind of rationality, still clinging to the memory from not so many nights ago in the dark, Katara tucked into his side, he was screaming at himself to cut it out, spirits damn it all, because this was  _ such  _ a bad idea. 

The rest of him didn’t care, because he had snapped, and he had shouted, and it felt so good. Because he was just so damn  _ tired,  _ and he missed her, he missed her so much, and he couldn’t fix anything if he didn’t know what he had done wrong.

But apparently, he had forgotten. Again. Forgotten that Katara had changed when he was gone. 

Before he left, on the rare occasion that he raised his voice, she would cave almost instantly. But this Katara was different. Harder, and more confident, and so, so, so very  _ angry. _

Katara shoved herself to her feet, the water curled around her hands smashing to the ground and hardening into ice in seconds. She spun around to face him, and he almost recoiled under the weight of the rage in her eyes. “Fine,” she hissed. “You want to know everything?”

“Yeah, I do,” Hakoda said, aware that his voice was too loud, too angry, but he couldn’t care over the blood roaring in his ears. “Please, tell me what I did, so that I can fix it.”

Katara stared at him for a second, speechless. And for a second, Hakoda thought that maybe he had cracked the anger. But then she doubled over, howling with laughter. She straightened up, eyes flashing vengefully, teeth bared in something that was decidedly not a smile. 

“You don’t even get it,” she spat. “You  _ can’t  _ fix it. You can’t take any of it back, none a second. 

“You want to talk? Fine. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about mom.”

Hakoda pulled back, his eyes widening, pain lancing through his chest. But Katara kept going. 

“Let’s talk about how mom died. Slow. Painful. Alone.” Her face crashed and burned and pulled itself into a harsh, blank fury. “Let’s talk about how mom died alone, burning to death even as she bled out. Let’s talk about how you died with her, in every way that matters.”

Katara laughed, and it sliced into Hakoda’s chest worse than a thousand ice shards. “Let’s talk about how mom died,” Katara snarled, taking a step towards him, glowing with fury. “Let’s talk about how Sokka, and Bato, and Gran-Gran, and I took our time to grieve, and then kept going. Let’s talk about how you crashed and burned.” 

She grinned at him, icy and unforgiving, cocking her head to the side. “Would you like me to tell you the stories?” she asked mockingly. “Do you want to hear about how Sokka stopped coming to you when he had nightmares because he knew you wouldn’t be able to help him? Do you want me to tell you about how Gran-Gran and Bato were more our parents than you were?”

Her face contorted, grief breaking though. “Do you want me to tell you,” she choked out, “about how I spent every day thinking about how I could have done things differently? Do you want to know about how all of us fucking missed her too, but none of the rest of us left?

“You want to talk?!” she yelled, her voice crescendoing. “Let’s talk then! Let’s talk about how you went to fight! Let’s talk about Sokka, thirteen and willing to die. Let’s talk about how he spent years training, so that one day he could be as good as you, because you weren’t around to tell him that he didn’t have to be you, and spirits knew he never listened to me. 

“Let’s talk about how you were gone for two years. Let’s talk about how we kept living without you. Let’s talk about how you missed two whole years of our lives, and now you just, what? Want to slip back into the space that you left behind?” 

Katara laughed, cold and cutting, and took another step forward. Hakoda took a step back, his mouth agape. 

“Well, I have a newsflash for you,” she said icily. “That space you’re looking for? You won’t find it. We grew up, and we grew into that space. And do you want to know the worst part?” she laughed.

Hakoda curled back, eyes wide, skin laying paper-thin and oh-so breakable above his muscles.  _ No,  _ he thought, sudden and desperate and utterly convinced.  _ No, I don’t want to know the worst part. Please don’t say it. _

If what she had said before was not the worst part, he would flee back to the mountains to avoid hearing it, would bury himself in the tundra to avoid being eaten alive by the guilt.

But Katara didn’t care. She was burning, and burning, and until she burned out, he would have to sit in the flames. He had started this fire. 

“The worst part,” Katara laughed, wet and cracking and utterly furious, “was that nothing even changed. You left, and nothing… nothing even changed, even though everything was different. Because the truth, awful and painful, that I’ve been avoiding for so long, is that you abandoned us a long time before you actually left. Mom died, and you started running, and you never stopped. You ran from your problems, and you ran from your pain, and you ran from us.”

Katara was crying now, tears rolling down her face creased in guilt and pain and fury in equal measure. “So no,” she said, her voice cracking. “You don’t get to tell me to do anything. Not after everything. Not after all of it. You want to know how to fix it? Well, I’ve turned it over in my head a million times, and I can't figure it out. You want to fix things? You can’t.” 

She grinned at him, and finally, he saw it for what it was. The last broken attempt of a hurting, furious girl to keep herself from crumbling under the pain of everything. 

“How’s that for talking?” she snapped.

For a few seconds, they just stood there. The last of the glow was finally fading from Katara’s hands, leaving them stranded in the half-darkness, alone with their pain and their guilt and their rage. 

Hakoda stood, curled half away from her, eyes blown wide and trying with all his might to not break down in sobs on the floor.

Katara stood across from him, fists clenched so tightly her knuckles were going white against the lingering blue. Her jaw trembled, but her eyes stayed firm and hard, and her back was straight, her shoulders squared. She looked painfully like Kya, and she seemed so much taller than him, glaring through the darkness and her own tears.

Hakoda knew that this was the part where he should say something. He should have something else on his tongue, an excuse, an apology, something, anything. But he met Katara’s livid eyes through the darkness, and he searched his tongue for something to say, and there was nothing there. 

(A good sailor never hesitated. But Hakoda never had been a very good sailor. And apparently he hadn’t been a very good father either.)

Katara seemed to realize that he had nothing to say at the same time that he did, because she pulled back, snorting derisively. She wiped her nose angrily, turning away from him. 

She dropped down in front of Aang again, who was blissfully unaware of all the shouting that had just happened above him. She reached out, and water from the basin by her feet coiled out and around her hands, turning brilliant blue again. 

“Shut the door on your way out,” she said coldly, already easing the water back into the wound.

Hakoda stood there for a few more seconds, curled away from her as if waiting for a blow to come. Slowly, slowly, he turned around, and walked on shaking legs back to the door. He slid out into the hallway, and eased the door shut.

He turned away from the door in a daze, her words ringing in his ears. Hakoda walked down the hall, his body automatically pulling him towards his room. He slid into the room in a daze, closing the door behind him with a shriek of the metal hinges. 

Hakoda leaned back against the door, and slid to the ground. His breath began coming faster and faster, and he hiccuped. He closed his eyes against the sudden stinging, the wavering at the edges of his vision.

Katara’s words, spiteful and hurting and horribly, achingly true, spun in his head.  _ You abandoned us a long time before you actually left. Mom died, and you started running, and you never stopped.  _

Had it really been that long? Had he really been running for so long? 

(Katara’s face, so much younger, every morning coming to wake him up, and him rolling away. Sokka’s face, pinched and upset and angry. His absence after the first few weeks. Bato, shouting,  _ You’re not the only one who lost her!)  _

Yes. He had been running for that long. 

So then perhaps the question was not how long he had been running, but why he had ever thought it was a good idea.

Hakoda curled up on the floor, and he closed his eyes to pretend he wasn’t crying, and the oceans of sand in his chest rose up, pouring into his throat and his mouth and out his lips, and there was no water. No here. Not for him. 

Hakoda closed his eyes, and he cried, and he ached. And he didn’t know how to fix it. 

\---

A week and a half later, the Avatar woke up.

\---

Sokka had described Aang well. Stubborn and talented and bright. Determined to help people.

When he woke up, Katara sat on the deck, and pulled him in for a huge hug, her eyes squeezed shut and her lips moving in something like prayers. Then she burst into relieved tears, truly crumbling for the first time in three weeks. 

Sokka curled one arm around Katara, and one around Aang, and leaned into them both, eyes closed and breath carefully measured, as if he thought it was a dream, and he would wake up if he let go.

Toph dropped herself next to Aang, yanking him in for a hug with the hand that she wasn’t currently weaving into Katara’s.

Aang’s eyes grew painfully wide at this, and his head turned so he could make eye contact with Hakoda. He wrinkled his nose, his startlingly gray eyes shocked and concerned.  _ What on earth happened?  _ his expression seemed to say. 

But then he turned back to his friends, sinking into their holds and asking something in words that Hakoda didn’t understand. Apparently, though, Sokka, Katara, and Toph understood some of it, because Toph smacked him furiously on his arm, hissing, “If you  _ ever  _ do that again, I will be strapping you to us for the rest of your life.”

Aang’s eyes widened, and he said, “If I do what again? I’m a little lost.”

Katara leaned in, pressing her forehead against his and murmuring, “Doesn’t matter right now. Tell you later.”

Aang’s forehead creased in confusion, but he leaned into his friends, closing his eyes and murmuring something low and lilting in words that sounded like nothing he had ever heard before.

_ The last airbender,  _ Sokka had said, with a bitter smile. Hakoda was suddenly realizing that he hadn’t truly understood what that meant. He was also suddenly, wildly embarrassed that it had never crossed his mind that a whole language must have died with the Air Nomads. 

But Aang leaned in, and Sokka and Katara and Toph followed, and all four of them were pressed together, breathing and crying and amazingly, wonderfully awake. 

When the four of them finally separated, Aang was the only one who hadn’t obviously been crying, though Toph stubbornly denied it. 

Sokka was quite gleeful when he told Aang that the world thought was dead. But if Aang’s words (or his face) were to be believed, it was in poor taste. Hakoda couldn’t help but wince a little, and exchange looks with Bato. 

Which, of course, was when all hell broke loose. 

A ship pulled up, and asked them why they were off course. Hakoda was suddenly reminded of Ukate, telling them about the system of ship identification. “Eastern fleet, actually,” he fibbed, Bato playing off of it with ease. 

Hakoda had almost believed that they were actually going to get away with the deception when Toph leapt up from the stairwell, roaring, “They know!” and sending the boarding plank plummeting into the ocean.

Toph and Katara pretty much carried the fight from there. Well, Toph, Katara, and a random, massive sea serpent that Sokka fervently thanked the universe for.

But Aang still looked unhappy with his status as assumed dead. So Hakoda wasn’t terribly shocked when he took off later that night. It sounded in keeping with his character, if the stories from the other three were to be believed. 

Still, when a terrified Katara came rushing up to him, Hakoda still kind of wanted to scold Aang for not realizing that while he had been sleeping away, his friends had been falling apart and missing him like a limb.

Katara yelled at him. Again. 

The first time, when he interrupted the healing session, had been all raw fury and aching rage and a bitterness that had festered for years. The second time, only a few days ago, she had shouted at him about how they were broken, and it was his fault too, and he couldn’t fix it, and that one had been laced with a crushing despair and anger in equal measure. This time was different than both of the others.

“How could he just leave us behind?” she yelled. 

(This time, the fire had finally gone out. It almost made Hakoda feel worse.)

This time, she was all smoldering ashes, and aching hurt, wet words and wet tears and tired all the way down. “I know you had to go,” she whispered. “So why do I still feel this way?”

_ Because I abandoned you, _ his mind whispered.  _ Because I hurt you in the name of good intentions.  _

What was it Hei Min had always said when Fire Nation soldiers had told her they were trying to help them?  _ The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  _

Katara, Sokka, and Toph took off on Appa, Momo in tow, promising that they would be back when they found Aang. Hakoda sat on the deck with Bato, and waited for them to come back. 

They got back around midnight, Sokka steering the bison, Aang sandwiched between Toph and Katara in the saddle. 

They dropped out of the saddle, and Sokka explained that they were going to take a day to get everything of theirs packed up and say their goodbyes, and then they would be traveling until the eclipse. 

Hakoda had seen this coming, of course. But it didn’t mean it hurt any less. 

The selfish part of him wanted to scream, to shout, to wail,  _ No, no, no! I just got you back.  _

The rest of him, the part that knew it wasn’t his choice anymore, was wistfully, insanely proud, even though he probably didn’t deserve to be. 

So Hakoda smiled and said, “Well, we’ll do whatever we need to to help you.”

Sokka smiled at him, leaning in for a hug. Behind him, Katara’s face did a complicated kind of flashing. Hakoda still didn’t know how to untangle everything buried in her expression. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he didn’t think she looked happy about leaving. 

The kids broke off, exchanging a few words and a few looks, grinning and bickering, and dispersing as quickly as they had come together. 

Hakoda still didn’t know how they communicated so effortlessly, but they must have come to a conclusion about something, because three of them peeled off immediately, leaving Hakoda standing alone on the deck with Aang. 

Hakoda watched Sokka and Katara disappear under the deck, and Toph trail back around the cabin. They vanished, and he took a second to wonder. He turned back around, and found Aang’s eyes already on him.

Hakoda looked the Avatar up and down, marveling again at Katara’s healing ability. Just days before, he had been lying comatose below deck, and just weeks before Hakoda had been entirely convinced that he would die within hours. Looking at Aang, young and curious and incredibly alive, it was hard to believe he had ever thought that. 

Aang tipped his head at Hakoda, reminding him of a bird. “So,” he said curiously. “You’re really Sokka and Katara’s dad.”

Hakoda smiled at him, and it felt crooked. “Kind of.”

Aang frowned, his eyes flashing through the darkness. “Kind of?” he asked, his voice lilting a little teasing. “You can’t be someone’s dad  _ kind of.”  _

Hakoda sighed. “Well, I’m fairly certain that it’s only  _ kind of,  _ right now at least.”

Aang opened his mouth, and suddenly winced, his body shuddering. His hand flew down to grip his stomach, his face contorting with a flash of pain before he carefully wiped it clear.

Hakoda wasn’t fooled. He had experience with kids pretending they weren’t sick. 

“You should sit down,” Hakoda said, dropping a hand on Aang’s shoulder. 

“I’m fine,” Aang insisted. 

“Katara would be furious if you undid all her hard work because you were too stubborn to admit you were hurting,” Hakoda said gently. “There’s nothing wrong with admitting you need help sometimes. And I can’t speak for you, but I’d rather not bring down Katara’s wrath right now.”

Aang grinned at that, crooked and amused. “All right,” he said. “You have a fair point.” 

He eased himself onto the floor, wincing a little. Hakoda followed him down, sitting cross-legged across from him.

Aang tipped his head at Hakoda, his eyes flashing in the dark, far more knowing than any twelve-year-old had a right to be. “Okay,” he said. “I know Katara said she wasn’t earlier, but she’s obviously lying, so, um. Why is she so mad at you?”

It was obviously an innocent question, but it still hit Hakoda like a slug in the gut. Sometimes innocent curiosity was more exposing than the most barbed of hits. 

Hakoda took a deep breath, shaking his head. He tried to scrape together his thoughts, collect up his failures and cup them in his fragile palms. Katara’s spiteful words and Toph’s silent dislike and Sokka’s differences like slaps in the face, curled in between his too small fingers.

“A better question,” he said slowly, “is what is she not mad at me about.”

Aang wrinkled his nose. “What do you mean?”

Hakoda sighed. “You might not know it. Something tells me that Sokka and Katara wouldn’t exactly be the most willing to share, but… I’ve failed them.” 

The words tasted bitter on his tongue, mostly because they were true.

“I’ve failed them in a lot of ways. Some more so than others. But I’ve hurt them, and Katara is rightfully mad about a lot of things that I did wrong. I’m not sure if I can really count as their father right now.” He hesitated, and then, in a reckless surge, admitted his horrible fear. “I’m fairly certain she hates me.”

Aang looked at him, and smiled a little. It looked sad. Wistful. 

“She doesn’t hate you,” he said softly. “I know she doesn’t. Neither of them do. Sometimes Katara gets really mad, but… she still loves you.”

Hakoda let out a slow breath. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But she’s still furious.”

Aang smiled again, and it looked too old for his young face. Hakoda wondered if that was the Avatar in him, or if it was just him. 

“Yeah, she might be,” he admitted. “But in my experience, anger only ever really comes from love of one kind or another. Katara gets angry with Toph and Sokka too when they do stupid things, but that’s usually because they could have hurt themselves, and she loves them. She wants them to be safe.

“So, maybe she is mad. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still love you. It probably means she loves you a lot. Just give her time. Let her be mad, and do what you can to earn her trust back, and eventually it’ll be okay again.”

Hakoda stared at him. Aang stared back, smiling encouragingly. Hakoda finally started laughing, doubling over. He shook his head, straightening up and looking at Aang admiringly. 

“You’re very wise for a twelve-year-old,” he said with a smile.

Aang grinned, raising his chin in fake haughtiness. “I’m a monk,” he said highly. “The wisdom comes with it. It’s a two for the price of one deal.”

Hakoda shook his head, laughing. Aang started laughing too, doubling over with giggles. 

Hakoda looked at him, barely up to his shoulder standing, and so young, and responsible for the whole world. 

Aang deflated suddenly, his face falling. His shoulders hunched in, and his face clouded. He opened and closed his mouth. He bit his lip, glancing at Hakoda nervously, and then said in a rush he said, “You remind me of Gyatso a little bit.”

Immediately, he snapped his mouth shut, his face already screaming that he regretted saying a word. But Hakoda was interested.

“Who is Gyatso?” he asked gently. 

Aang curled in on himself, rubbing his thumb over the inside of his palm. His eyes flashed, and this time Hakoda knew with what exactly. Hakoda was familiar with grief. 

“Gyatso,” he said slowly. “Well, he is… was…” he corrected, his voice scraping painfully. “He was the head monk at the Southern Air Temple. He was the best airbender there. Maybe the best airbender in the world.”

Hakoda looked at him. “Who was he to you?” he asked quietly. 

Aang took in a slow, shaky breath, and laughed wetly. “If Sokka and Katara mean what they say about you, then, I guess he was something like a father.” Aang smiled, and it looked more like a crumbling wall than anything else. 

“He was smart, and funny. And he knew so much about everything, it seemed like. He won his wisdom the good way. With years and years and years. He felt everything super deeply, and you could tell, but he had a way of controlling his emotions. He was my family.”

By now, Aang was quite obviously fighting off tears, and it sparked something in Hakoda’s chest. An old fire that had never gone out all the way. 

You could take the parent from the kids, but you couldn’t take the parent out of the person, apparently. And this kid was clearly in sore need of a parental figure.

Hakoda leaned forward, offering an arm to the tiny airbender. 

Aang looked at him, expression tentative. But a few seconds passed, and Hakoda’s arm didn’t move. Aang curled into Hakoda’s side, hiccuping with sobs. Hakoda wrapped his arms around his small shoulders, staring out over the waves and trying to wrap his head around the sheer depth of loss Aang held claim to. 

He tried to imagine waking up tomorrow to find that he was the last person from either Water Tribe. Waking up tomorrow to find that his friends, his mother, and Bato were all gone, his culture wiped from the record of memory. Waking up tomorrow to a world where Sokka and Katara had been dead for years.

His chest ached at the simple idea of it. Hakoda thought he probably would have crumbled. He wouldn’t have ever felt like enough to do justice to it all.

At some point, his children had grown up, and they had grown stronger than he would ever be. And then they had gone out and made friends that were stronger than he would ever be. And now they and their friends, young and stubborn and brave and so very strong, were doing what one hundred years of war couldn’t. They were making a real difference. 

“I’m sorry,” Hakoda whispered. “I know how painful it is to lose your family.”

Aang hiccuped in agreement, hunching in on himself in Hakoda’s arms.

“But,” Hakoda said, “it seems to me like you’ve found a pretty good one here. I know they don’t fill the same space, and they aren’t a replacement, but…” He closed his eyes against the darkness. “They love you,” he said quietly. “They love you so much. More than you could know. And they would do anything for you. Because you are a part of their family now.”

The words clung to his tongue, a bittersweet aftertaste that sung of could-have-beens. Bittersweet, because they were true, in an easy way, though love is anything but easy, and love in a war is bleeding over an altar from a chest you carved open yourself. 

Bittersweet, because in another world, Hakoda might have been a part of that. But in this world, burdened and pulled down by his own mistakes, he was only sorry, and endlessly bleeding under the weight of his want. 

Aang pulled back a little, wiping at his nose. He smiled up at Hakoda, watery. “They love you too,” he said quietly. “You’re still their family.”

Hakoda smiled back at him, and it just felt tired. “I hope so.” 

Aang tentatively slid back into his side, and Hakoda welcomed him. 

It was another half-hour or so before Aang slipped into sleep, still leaning on Hakoda. Hakoda pulled him down carefully into his lap so he wouldn’t wake up with a crick in his neck. Then he looked out over the ocean. The few men of his still out moving on the deck stepped around him, smiling at them or grinning at Hakoda. 

Hakoda rolled his eyes, waving off those who looked dangerously close to laughing at him. So he was a sucker for kids. What about it. 

He had things that he really should be doing, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Not when Aang was fast asleep on top of him. He wasn’t a monster. 

It was almost another hour later when Katara came up onto the deck, looking around. Honestly, Hakoda was a little shocked it had taken her so long to come looking for Aang. Worrying was practically her superpower. 

She came up, her head swiveling around, stopping when she saw him. Her shoulders came down, and he watched as she physically deflated, softening. 

Toeing the line between wistfulness and anger, he wondered who she was softening for. 

Katara slipped past Okata, grinning at him, and started walking towards him. Hakoda almost wondered if she might be up on deck for some other reason, but, no, she was making a beeline straight for him. She finally pulled up about three feet from him, looking as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself. 

Hakoda gave her a tentative smile. 

Her hands flickered towards each other, and she began twisting her fingers idly. To his surprise, she gave him a hesitant smile right back. “This seat taken?” Katara asked softly. 

Hakoda tried not to get his hopes up, smiling at her. “I always have room for you.”

Her eyes flashed guiltily, and she said, “I know.” Katara dropped down to the deck, tucking her legs up underneath her. Her eyes flickered down to Aang, snoring away on his lap. Her demeanor softened, her face melting into an easier smile. The relief was long-awaited and well earned. 

“Are you here to collect him?” Hakoda asked, hoping she wasn’t. It had been a while since a child had fallen asleep on him, nothing complicated tangled up in the space between them. He hadn’t really realized how much he missed it.

Katara smiled down at Aang. “No,” she said softly. “Let him sleep. He needs it.”

Hakoda watched her face, the slight flickers underneath her expression. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

Katara looked up at him, for a split second looking as if Hakoda had caught her doing something she shouldn’t. Terribly exposed. 

Hakoda waited for the wall to come up, for her to snap,  _ That’s none of your business.  _ Waited for any of the rage he had come to expect in the past three weeks. 

But, to his shock, it never came. Katara stared at him for a split second, looking painfully exposed, and then she sighed, her gaze dropping to the deck. “He just…” she said haltingly. “Everyone just expects so much of him. The world expects so much of him.” She paused, and then the edge of her lips curled up in a wry half-smile that looked anything but amused. 

“The world expects so much of  _ us.  _ And I know that sometimes he doesn’t think he can do it. Sometimes I don’t think anyone could do it. It’s just… I kind of want to let him sleep until all of it is over. I just want to wake up tomorrow and find that everything is over, and we didn’t have to lose anything more to end it.”

She sighed again, laughing nervously and twisting her fingers in her grip. “I always say that the world expects so much of him,” she said. “Really I should always be saying it expects so much of  _ us. _ I keep forgetting that I’m a part of this too, now. I keep forgetting I can’t walk away from this anymore.”

Hakoda’s chest tightened at her words. Her painfully, scarily true words. But he couldn’t fall apart about that. Not here. Not now. Not when she needed him. 

“But would you?” he said softly.

Katara looked up at him, eyes wide with confusion. “What?”

“Would you?” he repeated. “You say that you can’t walk away from this anymore. And you’re probably right. But would you? If you could. If you could walk away and leave it all behind, leave someone else to fix everything. Would you?”

Katara looked at him, searching his face for answers. Her eyes grew distant, vacant in the way they always did when she was looking for the answer to a question she didn’t know. Searching for the right answer when there was none at all. 

Her eyes refocused on him, her spine straightening. “No,” she said quietly. “No,” she said again, more confidently this time. “I wouldn’t walk away. I couldn’t. I would never forgive myself. Not if I could have made any difference at all. Not when I could have helped people.”

Hakoda smiled, and he laughed, trying not to wake Aang. He shook his head. “I’m not sure how it happened,” he said. “But somehow you and Sokka have both become better, stronger, more important people than I ever will be. And maybe I have no right, but, Katara, if you remember anything that I ever tell you, I want you to remember that I,” he said, meeting her eyes, “am  _ so  _ proud of you.”

Katara took in a sharp breath, her eyes widening. She gave him a watery smile, and laughed. “I’m sorry,” she blurted.

Hakoda frowned. “For what?”

Katara gave him an incredulous look. “For what?” she echoed. “For everything. All of it. These past three weeks, I’ve just been so  _ nasty  _ to you. Aang was dying, and I was falling apart, and trying to keep Sokka and Toph from falling apart, and,” she took a shaky breath, her eyes watering. “I was upset, and I was scared, and I was so  _ mad,  _ and I’m…” 

Katara stopped, suddenly, shooting him a tiny glare that almost felt like a relief. “I’m not sorry I was mad at you,” she said. “I’ll never be sorry about that. You earned that. But I didn’t just yell at you because I was mad at you, I also took out everything else I was feeling on you, and that was unfair, and I’m sorry.”

Hakoda stared at her. His first emotion was the sudden, crushing wave of relief that flooded his stomach. His second emotion was guilt, just as potent and far more present. Far more damning.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said softly. “I know you were struggling, and I know you were trying to help Sokka, and Toph, and Aang. And you did all of that beautifully,” he said. 

He gestured at his lap fall of snoring airbender. “Here’s the proof right here.” 

He smiled at her, and it was real all the way down. 

“I love you,” he said softly. “And I want to help you. In whatever way I can. Even if that way is being your verbal punching bag sometimes so you don’t bring your rage down on you friends who have not earned any of that anger.”   


Katara gave him a crooked, humorless smile. “None of that changes the facts. And the facts are that I am so sorry. And,” she said, her voice growing more quiet, “that I love you.”

Hakoda let out a slow breath, trying his damndest not to burst into tears right then and there. He smiled back at her. He wasn’t sure what else he might have said if Aang hadn’t snorted and rolled over, opening his eyes.

Aang frowned up at him, wincing a little. He mumbled something in the language Hakoda couldn’t speak, and then said, louder, “Did I fall asleep?”

Hakoda smiled down at him. “For a while. It seems like you needed it.”

Aang groaned, pulling himself into a sitting position. “I’ve been sleeping for three weeks,” he grumbled. “I don’t need any more.”

Katara snorted, folding her arms over her chest. “I’ll be the judge of that,” she said. “You’re on doctor’s orders right now, sir.”

Aang looked over at her, grinning. “And those orders are get more than three weeks worth of sleep?”

“I’m not sure it can really count as sleep,” Katara said. “You didn’t even snore. And you  _ always  _ snore.”

Aang’s face was one that looked as if it were used to smiling. “Did you miss it?” Aang asked, grinning. 

Katara pursed her lips, clearly trying not to smile, seemingly caught between the urge to impress upon Aang how truly terrified his friends had been, and the urge to let him live in blissful ignorance. 

Apparently, the urge to let him continue on without the guilt won, because Katara smiled at him and said, “Only a little. Once you get at it, it is pretty annoying. But it was just too quiet without the constant background scraping. You’re like white noise.”

Aang laughed. “You mean more than Sokka? Or Toph?”  
Katara’s nose wrinkled, her mouth opening a little. “Spirits,” she said, sounding a little horrified. “Am I really the only one in our group who doesn’t snore?”

Aang doubled over laughing, clutching at his stomach. “How have you not thought about this before?” he wheezed. 

“I grew up with Sokka!” Katara cried defensively. “Noise comes in the job description!”

“Job description? Sokka isn’t a job.”

Katara gave him a look. “Spoken like a man who never had to deal with him leaving week-old underwear everywhere.”

Aang covered his mouth with one hand, giggling furiously. Katara flattened her lips, trying not to smile. Aang gave up, openly giggling, clutching his stomach, and within seconds Katara had joined him, both of them doubled over and clutching at each other’s forearms, dying of laughter. 

Hakoda watched them, aware of a fond smile growing on his face. Katara looked truly, deeply happy, sitting here in the middle of the night, laughing with Aang. It was a good look on her. It was a good look on both of them, really. 

Aang reached out, taking hold of one of Katara’s hands. Katara took his in return. The two of them froze for a second, looking at each other and grinning furiously. Then they broke down again, howling with laughter. 

That’s when it clicked. 

Earlier that week, Hakoda had walked in on Bato and Sokka, deep in conversation. Sokka had been loudly complaining about how someone had, “gotten his stupid genes,” and how they had, “better fess up soon, for the sake of my sanity.” When Hakoda had actually walked in, Sokka had been in the middle of saying to Bato, completely seriously, “I have never empathized with past-you more.”

And now, here. Katara and Aang, gripping each other’s hands and laughing at something not really all that funny, smiling at each other with a light that Hakoda knew intimately. 

Part of Hakoda instantly wanted to go on guard. The rest of him knew better. 

Katara could take care of herself. Hakoda had no right to be trying to influence decisions about her heart now, after he had left them behind. 

And besides. He watched her fall apart laughing, clutching Aang’s forearms, and Aang fell apart laughing with her, and both of them seemed to love each other just as much as the other. She looked so happy. Hakoda wasn’t sure anyone that could make her look that overjoyed could be a bad thing for her.  
Hakoda smiled at them. He pulled back, pushing himself to his feet. “Well,” he said. “I’ll leave you two to it.” 

Katara had just spent three weeks trying to bring her best friend back to life. Spirits knew she deserved to spend some time with him.

Katara smiled up at him, and it still looked complicated, and messy, and tangled up with everything that was and everything that wasn’t. But for the first time, Hakoda was almost okay with that.

He went below deck to help Sokka pack. He spent the rest of the night after they finished packing in a ridiculous, no-holds-barred card game with Sokka, Toph, and Bato. Toph was a dirty cheater, and, surprisingly, so was Bato. Katara and Aang came down about an hour or so later, and joined in. Aang quickly joined the cheater ranks, and was far too amused by this. Not that it mattered. Sokka still won anyway. 

The kids finally all fell asleep in a massive pile sometime around dawn, and Bato and Hakoda exchanged one look above their curled up forms and resigned themselves to the fact that they would be watching over them for the rest of the night. 

The next morning, the kids left around noon. Sokka, Katara, and Toph did their rounds, hugging and saying goodbye to almost every person in the tribe. 

Well, Katara hugged. Sokka mostly shook forearms offered to him, and Toph just punched everyone. Even Aang got wished off. 

When Sokka got to Hakoda, he pulled him into a full hug, his eyes squeezed shut. Hakoda hugged him back, pressing a new ghostly imprint into his arms to remember when he was gone. Sokka pulled away, sniffing and smiling and saying, “We’ll see you in a month or so.”

Hakoda smiled at him. “Keep Toph in line.”

Sokka snorted. “I’ll do my best. Not that I think my best will do much.” 

Toph started laughing. She walked past, punching both Bato and Hakoda on the shoulder. 

Hakoda gave Bato a shocked glance. He had thought Toph hated him. Bato shrugged, smiling. He looked far too smug. Sometimes Hakoda really wondered why he was friends with Bato. (Then he remembered everything he loved about Bato, and resigned himself once more to having a secret troll for a best friend.)

Sokka pulled away, walking over to Appa to help Toph and a still-wincing Aang up, because, “Aang, if you bust those stitches on your side, Katara will kill you, and I will help her do it. Don’t test me.” 

To which Aang responded, “Yes, sir!” barked in a raspy voice with a mocking salute. Toph cackled, hoisting herself into the saddle. 

Hakoda tore his eyes away to see Katara standing in front of him. Her head was turned towards the bison, a fond, quietly awed smile on her face. She shook her head, snickering under her breath at her friends, and turned back to him.

Hakoda and Katara stared at each other, and the weight of it all hung between them. All the shouting, and the anger, and the abandonment. Katara took in a slow breath, and let it out, searching his face. Her eyes were still tangled. 

Hakoda smiled at her. He had resigned himself to the fact that he probably wouldn’t be getting a send-off from her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t wish her well.

“Take care of your brother,” he said. “I don’t trust him and Toph to not get thrown in jail together.”

Katara snorted, a smile of her own tugging at her lips. “I’ll do my best to keep them from getting arrested, but I make no promises.” She paused, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. Her expression settled into something like determination, the snarled mess beneath her skin receding for a second. 

Before Hakoda could even begin to try to figure out what that meant, Katara launched herself at him, wrapping him in her thin arms and burying her face in his chest. “Stay safe,” she murmured. And then, after a split-second hesitation, “I love you.”

Hakoda sucked in a shaky breath, and laughed, wrapping his arms around her and closing his eyes. “I love you too,” he whispered back.

Katara pulled away a few seconds later, and looked at him, saying, “You have the list, right?”

Bato nodded. “A three page list of all the ragtag friends you all have made, stirring up chaos all over the world.”

“We’ll find them,” Hakoda assured her. “And we’ll meet you at the rendezvous point in time for the invasion.” 

Katara nodded. “Okay. Good.” She smiled at Bato and Hakoda. “See you then.”

Hakoda smiled, and it only snapped in his cheeks like cracking ice a little. “See you then.”

Katara grinning at them both, shooting in to hug Bato quickly. Then she spun around and raced over the deck, leaping from bison leg to shoulder and catching Sokka’s hand just in time to pull herself up into the saddle. She dropped back down, having a quick, furious discussion with Aang that eventually resulted in him walking back from Appa’s head to grumpily drop in the saddle next to her, and Sokka taking the reins. 

The four of them raised up, waving goodbye, and then Sokka snapped the reins and shouted, “Yip yip!”

Appa roared happily, and leapt into the air, taking off in a rush of wind and sun glinting off his fur. 

Hakoda walked over to the rail of the deck, tucking his helmet beneath his arm and waving as they faded into the distance. He stayed there, waving, until the bison flew up into the clouds, and the whiteness wrapped around him, and they were gone. 

Sokka and Katara never looked back at him, and Hakoda was left knowing he would see them in a month and a half, and wondering why it still hurt so much.

The next month and a half was spent sailing up and down the continent, meeting up with and requesting the help of people Sokka, Katara, and Aang had met or helped. Many of them were a bit standoffish at first. There was really no other way to survive in a war. But when Hakoda told them he was Sokka and Katara’s father, he suddenly had more friends than he really knew what to do with. 

Teo and his father had amazing things to say both about Sokka’s ingenuity and Katara’s fearlessness. It took Hakoda all of five minutes in conversation with the earthbender boy they had befriended, Haru, to realize that he had an awful crush on Katara. Hakoda could honestly say that he never wanted to spend another night with the swamp men again after he had to eat a giant bug. 

It was a bit unnerving. To be recognized, not as the chief of the Southern Water Tribe, but as Sokka and Katara’s father. It was strange to realize that thousands of people across the world knew his children, or knew of them. It left Hakoda as terrified as it left him proud. 

Still, to see them all amassed under the dying sun set something in Hakoda’s chest alight. It was a strange monument to human determination, but no less awe-inspiring because of it.

The invasion should have worked. Sokka’s plan was amazing. The submarines were a feat of genius, and the tanks were practically flawless. 

It should have worked, and it probably would have. If the Fire Nation hadn’t known they were coming. 

Hakoda wasn’t sure how they had known. But they had. 

The eclipse ended as quickly as it had begun, and Hakoda felt something begin to sink in his chest. Sokka roared for them to retreat to the beach, and everyone followed. But Hakoda couldn’t squash the sinking sensation in his chest that they had already lost this battle. 

They were maybe halfway to the beach when the airships passed them. It was Aang who connected the dots, that they were going to destroy the submarines and strand them. 

Katara’s expression fell, horror and fury and terror flashing over her face. Toph’s face echoed Katara’s, and Aang looked devastated. 

Sokka’s expression hardened as he declared that they should stand and fight, and Hakoda knew what this was. Sokka was tired of the running, of the hiding, of the fighting and the waiting in between. The waiting to die. He was ready to stand his ground, and fight, and fight, and fight, until he was on top or he was going down in flames. 

But Hakoda wouldn’t let him. He wouldn’t watch his son die for nothing. 

He had seen Katara, Toph, and Sokka fight together on a beach months ago, and he had seen it again today. They were good. Better than Hakoda had ever been, and better than he would ever be. They were the world’s best chance, even if it left Hakoda with a bitter taste on his tongue to leave the responsibilities of the elders who had failed on the shoulders of the children they had failed. 

They couldn’t die here in a doomed last stand to make a point. The world couldn’t afford that. 

(And the selfish part, the part of Hakoda that wasn’t a liar, wasn’t too proud to admit that he couldn’t watch them die. He wouldn’t. He refused to stand by and let his children fight a doomed battle. He refused to let them throw themselves onto the ever-growing pyre of war in a last effort to save everyone.)

(They still wanted to save everyone. A part of Hakoda admired that. The rest of him knew better, knew that in war you could never save everyone. There would always be someone left behind.)

The kids had to go, and Hakoda told them as much. Sokka’s face began falling into understanding and resignation within seconds, but Katara shouted, “What? We can’t leave you behind! We won’t leave anyone behind!” 

Hakoda’s chest ached, because, spirits, it always came down to this, didn’t it? Back to the ache in his chest, back to the space in Katara and Sokka’s lives, back to the pain and the abandonment and the oceans of sand that sat, waiting, in the bottom of his lungs. 

Of course Katara and Sokka didn’t want to leave them behind. They knew how that hurt.

_ But you have to,  _ the voice in Hakoda’s head screamed.  _ You have to, or you’ll die here, and I’m selfish and weak and I can’t watch that happen, I won’t, not for me.  _

Hakoda almost snorted at the irony of it. That it was his turn to be left behind, the best warriors going off to fight another day, and the ones who could do nothing being left behind. 

“You’re our only chance in the long run,” Hakoda said loudly, almost yelling, because  _ please, gods, please, you have to go now, you can’t die here for me.  _

“You and Sokka have to go with Aang somewhere safe. You have to keep hope alive.”

_ Please, please, please. You have to be safe. You can’t die here. I can’t live in a world without you in it, please.  _

“The youngest of our group should go with you,” Bato said grimly. “The adults will stay behind and surrender. We’ll be prisoners, but we’ll all survive this battle.” 

Haru’s father stepped forwards, his mouth set in a heavy line. “I’ve got some experience with Fire Nation prisons. It’s not going to be easy, but we’ll get by.”

The explosion of the submarines could be seen even from as far away as they were. Hakoda saw the resignation slide onto both Sokka and Katara’s faces, and let out a sigh of relief when Sokka gave a sober nod and said quietly, “Alright. Let’s go.”

Hakoda smiled at both of his children, and talked about victory. He talked about how much he loved them, and how proud he was. 

They both looked on the verge of tears, but it was okay. They would make it out.

Katara took in a shuddering breath, and launched herself at him. Her arms tightened around his shoulders, her face buried in the crook of his neck. Sokka slipped in on his other side, joining the hug. Hakoda curled his arms around them and listened as Sokka promised that they wouldn’t be apart for too long this time. He prayed that his son was right. 

“We love you,” Katara hiccuped. 

Hakoda closed his eyes. “I love you too.  _ Wet pon veuni, envuqes.” _

They pulled away, and climbed up onto the bison with the other kids. Appa shot off into the clouds with a mournful bellow, carrying away the youngest of their party. 

Hakoda could practically feel the sigh of relief go out among the group. 

He stood and watched the sky bison carry away the world’s last hopes. Watched as his world faded into the clouds. Sokka and Katara didn’t look back. And even though he had wanted this, it still ached. 

He watched until he could no longer distinguish the bison from the clouds, and then he slid down to sit on the ground. Bato followed him, and in a wave of motion, most of the camp sat. They sat in silence, staring as the air balloons looped back around and began trundling towards them. 

Bato reached out and dropped a hand on his forearm. Hakoda twisted his wrist and gripped Bato’s forearm back. 

Haru’s father sat next to them, and fixed Hakoda with a look. “Your children are quite something,” he said quietly. 

The edge of Hakoda’s lips pulled up in a humorless smile. “I know. Not that I can claim much credit for that.” 

Haru’s father raised an eyebrow. “I think you can claim more than you think.”

Hakoda snorted, glancing up at the sky. “I don’t suppose it matters much now.”

Haru’s father snorted right back. “Maybe you’re right. But we’ve all done things to save people we care about. We love them, and we try to protect them, even if we do it all wrong. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still mean something.”

Hakoda rolled the words over his tongue, tasting them. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Even if we’re doing it all wrong.”

They fell back into silence, everyone in the group pairing off into smaller groups, holding hands and waiting. A few of them swayed back and forth, humming. 

Ukate was the one who finally broke the silence, with an old bar song. 

_ “Quickly whips the rising tide, _

_ And loudly screams the singing dead.  _

_ Here we could be breathing, _

_ But watch us laugh instead. _

_ Here we could be dying,  _

_ But watch us drink and dance instead.” _

Hauki picked up the murmured song with his deep tenor voice, adding a kind of depth to it.

_ “Frigid blows the Southern wind, _

_ And lazy creep the stars. _

_ The sun has gone, but that’s alright, _

_ Here we’ll make our warmth tonight. _

_ The day is done, and so are our wits, _

_ That’s fine, that’s fine, _

_ Tonight on all our fears we’ll dine.” _

Tanuk hummed along, and joined in for the chorus. 

_ “Empty lay our father’s graves, _

_ Their bones are somewhere else tonight. _

_ Hollow sit our frozen cups,  _

_ Our minds are in the skies and the world sleeping tight. _

_ Tonight we’ll dance with aching bones, _

_ And dance the tightrope of the dead.  _

_ We’ll listen with lilting ears to their song,  _

_ And tomorrow we won’t know what they said.” _

The three of them paused for a second, glancing at one another. Then, by some unspoken agreement, they started again.

The bar song was meant to be sung at top volume, drunk and looking for some kind of relief before you had to go out and face the world again the next morning. 

The way the three of them were singing it was different. Low and mournful and decidedly haunting, it sounded like a last goodbye. Like singing over a grave to bring someone back to life.

They began again. 

_ “Quickly whips the rising tide, _

_ And loudly screams the singing dead.  _

_ Here we could be breathing, _

_ But watch us laugh instead…”  _

Slowly, men began to join in, even the ones not from the Water Tribe. Sometimes they stumbled over the words, but they kept going in the strange minor key, somber and mourning. 

_ “The sun has gone, but that’s alright, _

_ Here we’ll make our warmth tonight. _

_ The day is done, and so are our wits, _

_ That’s fine, that’s fine…” _

Not many of them could actually sing very well, but Hakoda thought there was a strange beauty in it anyway. 

_ “Tonight we’ll dance with aching bones, _

_ And dance the tightrope of the dead.  _

_ We’ll listen with lilting ears to their song,  _

_ And tomorrow we won’t know what they said.” _

They tilted into the third repeat, and this time, everyone was singing. Hakoda swung back and forth, clutching his stomach and singing. Next to him, Bato sat cross legged, eyes closed, humming along quietly. Haru’s father sat next to them, head tilted back, singing in his raspy voice. The song carried through the empty city, echoing off walls and bouncing between the hollow spaces, filling everything with a low, haunting cadence. Hakoda closed his eyes, and sank in the sound, and sang.

They kept singing. Even when the Fire Nation soldiers came over the ridge, flames cupped in their hands, shouting for surrender. Even when they were yanked to their feet and put into cuffs. 

A soldier punched Ukate in the face, and he spit out a glob of blob, and kept singing through split lips. 

The sound kept echoing, spinning above them even through the shouts.

Hakoda raised his chin against the rising smoke, and kept singing. The song fractured, and all of them kept going at different places, in different tones, an eerie harmony that sounded like anything but defeat. 

Hakoda watched a few soldiers falter in the face of it. Young ones, mostly, men and women who watched them raise their chins and link their hands and keep singing with the furious determination of people with nothing to lose. Confronted, perhaps for the first time, with the notion that the people they were fighting were just that. People. 

Their group still ended up in chains and in transports. They still ended up carted off to various prisons. But Hakoda clung to that strange echoing feeling, the soaring without wings. He clung to the fact that they had made someone think. That they had given themselves hope.

\---

Three weeks later, he stepped off a gondola into a prison surrounded by boiling water, humming an old bar song.

\--

Honestly, Hakoda wasn’t sure why he was shocked. If Haru and his father’s stories were to be believed, Sokka and Katara had already led one high security Fire Nation prison break. And they were certainly chaotic enough to be making a habit out of it. 

Hakoda wasn’t sure what he was expecting when a guard slipped into his room, but Sokka was… not it. 

(Haru’s father had been right. It hadn’t been easy. The punches, the spit in his face, the too-tight hands on his arms and the heavy glares from the soldiers on the back of his neck had almost been easier that the muttered whispers of  _ savage.  _ The physical hurt had almost been easier than the slurs, the name-calling, the barbed insults hurled like spears. 

It had definitely been easier to take than the soldier who realized quickly that the best way to get to him was to sing-song threats about Sokka and Katara. If he was to be believed, the princess Azula had called dibs on Katara’s head, and that the royal executioner had called dibs on Sokka’s. Hakoda didn’t know how actually likely that was. It didn’t change the terror.)

Sokka flipped up the visor on his helmet, and grinned at him, and Hakoda could suddenly breathe again. He yanked Sokka in for a crushing hug, if only to silence the screaming in his head. 

“Sokka,” Hakoda said suddenly, half of him still screaming with terror. “I’m going to ask you something and you can’t ask why.”

Sokka pulled back, looking him in the eye and frowning. “Of course,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

“Is Katara safe?” Hakoda asked desperately. 

Sokka frowned, his eyes narrowing. “Of course, why would she not be?”

Hakoda sighed, relief flooding his veins. He closed his eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

He opened his eyes again to see Sokka squinting skeptically at him. “Alright,” Sokka said slowly. “That was not convincing at all, but I’ll drop it for now.”

Hakoda smiled, and pulled him in for another hug.

In the end, it was Sokka who came up with the idea of commandeering the gondola. It was Hakoda who added in the bit about how they should take the warden as their hostage. 

Too soon, Sokka was standing up and putting on his helmet because he had to go, but he told Hakoda excitedly to meet him in the farthest right corner of the courtyard in the next free block. Hakoda’s skin itched, and he forced his fingers to let go after hugging Sokka one last time, ignoring the urge under his skin that begged to never let Sokka out of his sight again. 

Sokka left, and Hakoda went back to pacing. Sokka was safe. Katara was safe. The leader of the Kyoshi warriors was here, and Sokka was breaking her out with him, along with the prince of the Fire Nation, because his children apparently couldn’t lead normal lives for anything. 

Free block came about an hour and a half later, and Hakoda walked out to the courtyard into the farthest right corner, presumably to meet Suki. 

True to his expectations, there was a muscular girl having a hushed whisper argument with another young man who looked Fire Nation. Prince Zuko, likely. The short guard hovering closest to them was Sokka. Hakoda could tell by the way he was fidgeting. 

Hakoda pulled up, and Suki glanced up at him, recognition dawning in her eyes. 

She didn’t look overly dangerous, or terribly like a gifted warrior who had trained for years in a specific style of martial arts that meant she could take on almost any opponent. But the way she carried herself made Hakoda believe it. 

Suki carried herself with a quiet, dangerous confidence that made Hakoda think she could handle anything he could throw at her and then some. She carried herself like Hei Min did, like Katara and Toph did. Like she had fought and killed and would do it again if she had to. 

Sokka saw Hakoda, and his shoulders lifted, brightening obviously beneath the helmet. He slipped over to arrive just as Hakoda pulled to a stop next to Suki and Zuko. 

Both Suki and Zuko fell silent as Hakoda arrived. Suki looked at him with just barely narrowed eyes, and Hakoda had to dismiss the unease that prickled under his skin at her glance. Zuko just looked up at him apprehensively, visibly forcing himself to stand his ground.

Sokka bounded up, trying and failing not to appear excited. “Okay,” he whispered. “I can’t stay long or someone will start to suspect something, but, hey. Suki,” he said, his fingers twitching in an aborted motion towards Suki’s arm. “This is my dad, Hakoda.”

Suki gave Sokka a generous smile, but when she turned back to Hakoda, the narrow look in her eyes was still there.

Hakoda offered Suki his forearm, and she took it, her grip tight. “It’s nice to meet you Suki,” he said, trying to sound as excited as he felt to meet the girl his children had talked of so eagerly. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Sokka and Katara.” He shot Sokka a sly grin, narrowing his eyes. “Mostly from Sokka, though.”

Sokka squawked indignantly, snapping down the visor over his reddening face. “Oh, look at that!” he laughed, gesturing over his shoulder at nothing. “That’s my cue. Better get going now!” He turned on his heel, and all but sprinted away. 

Suki shook her head, snickering, as Sokka ran away. She released Hakoda’s arm, and all three of them watched Sokka disappear into the crowd. 

“Is he always this awkward?” Zuko asked.

Suki smiled fondly. “Yup,” she said. “Pretty much.”

Hakoda turned back to Suki. Suki kept watching, staring into the crowd for a good twenty seconds after Sokka had vanished from sight. Then she spun around to face him. 

Suki’s eyes had gone hard and furious. Hakoda felt his own eyes widen, and took a step back too late. She curled her hands into fists, pulled back one arm so fast it was just a blur in Hakoda’s vision, and punched him in the face. 

So, maybe Sokka and Katara hadn’t been exaggerating when they said how strong she was. Hakoda’s head spun, and he staggered back, clutching his nose that was undeniably broken. 

Zuko gasped, recoiling away from them, golden eyes wide. Suki’s eyes flashed over to him for a split second, and Hakoda could swear he saw her get more angry about something, but before he could wonder what, she was whipping back around to him, her face set in something like hatred. 

“What was that for?” Hakoda exclaimed past the blood pouring from his nose into his mouth. 

Suki snarled, her eyes flashing with rage. “That was for Sokka,” she hissed. “For Katara. For your kids, who were never going to punch you, even though you deserve a whole lot more. For your kids, who you  _ left behind.”  _

Hakoda knew he was staring. His hand had drifted away from his throbbing nose, and blood was pouring over his tongue, and he could almost pretend that was the real reason he wanted to puke. 

Suki plowed onwards, apparently not done dragging his soul through the briar patch. 

“You will never be able to understand exactly what you did to them, and they are good people, so they will never tell you everything.”

Hakoda’s chest twisted, and he almost laughed, Katara’s words ringing in his ears.  _ They told me more than you guessed, probably.  _

But Suki was right. She was right, and Hakoda knew it. Katara was good, too good and too caring to tell him everything. She told him just enough for him to understand her rage, and no more. 

Suki still wasn’t done. 

“I hope that you can be a good father from now on,” she snarled, “And I’m glad that you love them, I know that you do. But you deserved to get punched.”

Hakoda waited for more. But, no. That was it.  _ (You hurt them, and they'll never tell you, and that’s it. That’s all.  _

It was almost funny, his internal monologue. Almost.)

Suki kept staring at him, furious and dangerous and every bit the woman his children had described. Every bit the woman his children deserved to help them.

(Hakoda’s chest was a tangled, aching mess, his thoughts snared up in each other and filling his every inch with an insistent cry of hurt. He wanted to laugh, and probably would have if his tongue wouldn’t have spilled blood and glass and sand everywhere if he did. He wanted to ask her,  _ Are you happy now?  _

But he didn’t, because she wasn’t looking for happiness. She was looking for him to understand. And if this was even a shred of how Sokka and Katara felt, then Tui and La, Suki had gotten what she came for. He understood, he understood, and it ached.)

“You’re right,” he managed to choke out past the oceans of sand rising in his lungs. 

(No water here, not for him, just the impression of rivers long ago.) 

“And I did deserve that.” And more. “You don’t have to apologize for that.”

Suki’s lips curled up in disdain, eyes flashing furiously. “I wasn’t going to.” 

Despite himself, Hakoda barked a laugh. He considered telling Suki she was so very like Katara. If he understood Suki at all, she would take it as a compliment. 

He didn’t. Instead, he said, “Not that either of you need it,”  _ (not that either of you need anything from me)  _ “But you have my approval, Suki.” He smiled, and it only stung like cracking ice in his chest. “My son found a wonderful young woman.”

_ He deserves you,  _ Hakoda didn’t say.  _ They both deserve better than me, and you are better than me without even trying. _

Suki’s face twisted, dropping in confusion. She clearly hadn’t been prepared for a compliment from him. She nodded, a bit awkwardly. 

The punch had clearly been planned. Idly, Hakoda wondered how many times she had played this out in her mind. 

The three of them fell into silence, but it no longer felt as uncomfortable. Suki had aired her grievances, and was apparently now more or less alright with him, if not friendly.

Zuko kept glancing back and forth between Suki and Hakoda, eyes wide and looking slightly shocked. Hakoda almost asked him what he was shocked for, but before he could open his mouth, Suki cleared her throat, a bit awkwardly.

“Um,” she said. “I think I may have broken your nose.”

Hakoda reached up and brushed his fingers along the side of his nose, wincing as a spike of pain shot through it. “Definitely,” he said. “You have an admirable punch.”

Suki grinned a little. “I know someone who’s served as an army medic. She could take a look at it, if you want.”

Suki’s eyes narrowed, just enough so that anyone not looking might have missed it. Anyone not paying attention might have missed the slight inflection she put into _‘she_ could take a look at it,’ in conjunction with, ‘army medic.’  
Everyone who had served knew that the Earth Kingdom army rarely had women, even as medics. 

Hakoda had to give it to her. Suki was good. She was giving him an opportunity, right then and there, to prove to her what kind of a person he was. If he would turn down help because the person helping was Fire Nation.

Hakoda smiled at her wryly. “I suppose it can’t hurt,” he said. “Something tells me the guards wouldn’t exactly be willing to help us.”

Suki’s eyes widened a bit, flashing with the barest tint of respect, and he knew she had caught his double meaning. 

_ We’re all in here together,  _ he might as well have said out loud. 

“Alright,” Suki said, smiling at him a little. Then she glanced over at Zuko, and her smile grew a bit bigger. “Let’s go see Kyanme.”

Hakoda was expecting a woman.

Even after everything, he was still expecting everyone to be at least Hei Min’s age, if not older. War had an awful way of proving him wrong. 

Kyanme looked as if she were younger than Suki, possibly even younger than Sokka. Still, she carried herself like they all did. Head high, shoulders squared, confidence earned in trial by fire. 

She had a Fire Nation face, sharp-jawed with high cheekbones and hawk eyes. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a loose ponytail, a few braids running along her scalp. She seemed vaguely familiar, though Hakoda had no clue why.

Suki bounded up and called, “Kyanme! We need some medical help.”

The girl sat up from where she had been flopped over half in the lap of a man who looked like he was from the Earth Kingdoms. “What did you do now?” she asked, grinning.

Suki grabbed Hakoda’s shoulder and shoved him to the ground opposite Kyanme. “That,” she said.

Kyanme took one long look at Hakoda, dripping blood everywhere, his nose obviously broken. Then she looked back up at Suki and said, exhaustedly, “Why. Why did you have to break his nose.”

Suki crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “Because he deserved it,” she said flatly. (Which, even though she was right, ouch.) “Now can you help, or not?”

Kyanme sighed. She turned back to Hakoda, running her fingers up and down the length of either side of his nose. 

Her fingers were abnormally warm against Hakoda’s skin, and he fought the urge to pull away. It was habit now, to fear fire, and those who could create it. 

Kyanme’s lips pursed, and in one swift motion, she seized his nose, and snapped it back into place with a startling crunch.

Hakoda yelped as pain shot through him, leaping back and staggering to his feet. 

Kyanme pulled herself to her feet, smooth and calm, as if a broken nose were nothing to her. She brushed herself off and said, “Can I go now? I’m late for my lunch block.” She gave Suki a significant look. “So are you, you know.”

Hakoda saw something flash behind Suki’s eyes, determination and fear warring. He wasn’t sure which one it was that made Suki pull Kyanme aside and begin speaking to her in hushed tones.

Hakoda wasn’t sure what she said, exactly, but at the end Suki pulled Kyanme in for a hug, and Kyanme shot up and pressed a small kiss against Suki’s temple, her hand hooked around the back of Suki’s neck. 

Her amber eyes were closed when she did it, and it looked startlingly mournful. Startlingly real.

(Watching the display made Hakoda feel like he was back on a beach in the fog, watching three children try not to fall apart seconds away from their unconscious friend. Trespassing on a sacrosanct ritual of love he had no right to. 

What did it say about him, that he had never considered it? What did it say about him as a person, that this was the first time he had thought, truly and deeply, about how people from the Fire Nation felt love too? What did it say about him, that it took standing in a prison watching two girls say goodbyes for possibly forever, to make him realize that at the end of the day, they were all just people?

Nothing good, probably.)

(Hakoda was a good man. Or he tried to be, at least. He had always thought he was a good man. A few displays from a few children, hurting and burning in a war the same as him was all it had taken for him to begin to wonder if he was really a very good person at all. Was he? He wasn’t sure anymore.)

Kyanme pulled away, and she smiled at Suki. She turned, and walked away towards the cafeteria.

And suddenly, Hakoda knew exactly why she looked familiar.

She was the girl. She was the warrior from that day in the forest, the child with golden eyes and a commander’s voice. She was the one who had stared him in the face, completely able to kill him, and had chosen to retreat instead. And now here they were again, and here she was making Hakoda hesitate again. Here she was, making him doubt. 

(How had she gotten here, he desperately wanted to know. What had she done to earn imprisonment? Had she earned it?

Or had she done what she was making Hakoda do now? Had she started thinking, and thinking, and stopped taking the orders given to her as gospel?

Hakoda would never know. He would never know a lot of things. War makes strangers of family, and lies of truths, and he didn’t know what to believe in anymore.)

Sokka slipped up to Suki, his fingers clearly itching to take Suki’s hand. So softly that Hakoda almost couldn’t hear him, he asked, “Who was that?”

Suki stared into Kyanme’s wake, and she looked fragile for the first time since Hakoda had met her. “A friend,” she said, equally quiet. 

A friend? The Fire Nation made a lot of things, but it didn’t make friends. 

But the way Kyanme had greeted Suki earlier, the way Suki had pulled her in for a hug, the way Kyanme had closed her eyes when kissing Suki’s forehead… 

Hakoda had always taken that the Fire Nation was full of bad people as truth. But war made a habit of making lies of truth, and maybe Hakoda wasn’t sure what was right at all anymore.

“Did you tell her?” Sokka asked.

Suki stared after Kyanme, and her lips tightened. Hakoda realized she was trying not to cry.

“I had to,” she said softly.

Sokka stared after the Fire Nation girl, and both of them looked so tired. Hakoda wondered sometimes, if they were as tired as they felt.

(Hakoda wondered sometimes if he was half as strong as these children, so young and already carrying more exhaustion than he ever had. He thought he probably wasn’t.)

Sokka walked away, and Hakoda slid up to Suki.

Suki looked up at him, the fragile look on her face gone beneath the sudden wall she slammed up. It hurt, that no one trusted him. He had earned it, probably, but it still hurt.

“I know she’s helped you,” Hakoda said. “But telling her could endanger this.”

Instantly, he knew it was a mistake, if only by the way Suki looked suddenly furious. “Of course you would think that,” she said. “And maybe you’re right. But there are people in here like you and me. People who stood up for what they thought was right, and don’t deserve to be here, and she’s one of them.”   
She glared at him, and Hakoda forced himself to stand his ground. 

“If I can give her a chance, no matter how small, to get an out? I’m going to take it. Just because you were cowardly enough to do it, doesn’t mean everyone can just leave someone they care about behind.”

She deflated, the exhaustion that seemed to live just under the surface of all their anger making itself known. “Besides,” she said, and she sounded like she had been born and not slept since. “Isn’t everyone here still a person? Don’t they still deserve more than this?”

Suki turned away from him. “We deserve more than this,” she said quietly, and Hakoda suddenly wondered whether she was talking about the prison or the world. 

“I won’t leave them behind,” she said, shooting a glare aching of exhaustion over her shoulder at him. “People deserve to make that kind of choice about their lives themselves.”

Suki walked away.

Hakoda stared in her wake, hurting and uncertain and dripping with guilt. 

Zuko stood next to him, watching Suki leave as well, and he looked guilty. He looked tired. He looked like Toph, and Sokka, and Katara, and Suki, and Aang. He looked an inch away from falling and never hitting the ground. A moment away from crumbling under the weight of everything they had to fix.

The images clashed and warred and howled in Hakoda’s mind. Kyanme staring down at him through the smoke, kissing Suki on the forehead, her eyes closed as if in prayer. Katara sitting next to her unconscious friend, praying, laughing under the stars with the same boy not two weeks later. Toph, killing men without hesitation, playing games with Sokka. Sokka, holding his friends on a beach, and dancing with Katara on the deck of a stolen ship. 

The world was broken, and they had left it to their children to fix. No amount of guilt on Hakoda’s part could change that. 

It was shameful that now he was realizing it. That children from all three nations, (four, if you included Aang, and spirits, you had to include Aang, didn’t you? He had lost so much) were bruising and bleeding and breaking under the weight of everything wrong with the world, everything that wasn’t their fault.

They had poured a world snapping at the seams into their children’s bruised hands, and they were all just  _ kids,  _ and the world was broken, and Hakoda didn’t know how to fix it. He didn’t know how to help them.

Zuko glanced up at Hakoda, opening and closing his mouth. Hakoda almost wanted to apologize to him.

_ (For what, for what, for what?  _

For everything.) 

Zuko seemed to think better about whatever he might have been about to say, because he flushed, looked down, and followed Suki into the crowd. 

Hakoda stood in place, breathing and swaying in the pull of the crowd’s current, a minnow unsure which way was upstream and so reduced to swimming in aimless circles. He stared after Suki and Zuko, and wondered who he had hurt the most in the world. 

Was it Bato, who had stood by him through every moment he had fallen apart and taken all his bluntness without complaint?

Was it Suki, who had to watch his children break and had to hold them up because he had been too busy hurting them in the name of good intentions?

Was it Toph and Aang, who had been more Sokka and Katara’s family than he had in years, holding them together and supporting them in a way he didn’t know how to anymore?  
Was it his men, who he had dragged into a war under the pretense of helping, when all he was really doing was running, running, running?

Was it Hei Min, who had had to put up with him for two years because it was the closest she would get to power, to command, to respect, while he fell apart and she had to take care of both her troops and his?

Or was it Sokka and Katara, who had needed him? Was it his children, who he had left behind because he wasn’t strong enough to shoulder the space between them? His children, who he had hurt and abandoned and who still came for him in his hell when he deserved nothing from them. 

He stood and stared in the wake of two children cleaning up their messes, and he wondered which of them he had hurt the most.

_ None of them,  _ the whispers in his mind answered him.  _ All of them,  _ his heart answered. 

He swallowed the sand in his lungs, his throat, on his tongue. He followed Suki and Zuko to lunch. 

Free block came, and they started a riot. 

Turns out, he and Sokka hadn’t exactly thought through  _ how  _ they would be taking the warden hostage. 

Suki had.

And Tui and La did Hakoda underestimate just how terrifying Suki was in true action. 

He wasn’t sure he would ever recover from the sheer shock of watching her run over the heads of the crowd and scale a vertical wall with sheer speed, let alone beat multitudes of guards without even really trying.

“Should we help her?” Hakoda asked in alarm. 

“The day Suki needs our help to handle a few guards who don’t know what they’re up against is the day I start waterbending,” Sokka said. “Come on. She’s got this.”

She did indeed got this. It took her maybe half a minute to take the warden into custody. 

Boarding the gondola was entirely too easy. Which meant Hakoda wasn’t terribly shocked when a girl with blue fire and one who could walk on a tightrope like it was a sidewalk started coming at them. Sokka and Zuko went for the princess, and Suki began a furious exchange of blows with the girl in pink, too fast for Hakoda to follow with his eyes. He would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a little useless. 

And then the warden shouted to cut the line, and everything was going to shit, and his biggest regret was that he was going to die, and he would never get to see Katara one more time.

But then there was someone on the platform, slicing through the ranks of the soldiers. She was defending the line. 

“Mai,” Hakoda heard Zuko breathe. He sounded as awed as he sounded devastated. 

The gondola kept moving, not plummeting towards the boiling water so far below them. It landed on the far side. They disembarked, and Suki looked at Zuko. “Your choice,” she said quietly. 

Zuko took in a shaky breath, staring up at the line. He murmured something under his breath in the language of the Fire Nation, like a prayer. Or maybe an apology. 

Then he pulled himself up onto the top of the gondola, and curled his hands around the hinge on the cord, fingers hovering only inches from the metal. Fire roared from his palms, a stream of harsh yellow that cast him in a flickering glow. Almost a minute later, he pulled his hands away, leaving a white-hot, melted hunk of metal dripping off the cord. The gondola wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Zuko pushed himself down, and spoke hollowly about his sister’s way onto the island. Their way off the island. 

The airship was even bigger than Hakoda remembered. But Sokka got into the cockpit, and figured it out in about three minutes. Then they were airborne, and leaving.

They were leaving. 

Suki and Chit Sang seemed in shock. Hakoda supposed he couldn’t blame them. He had been in prison for less time than them, and even he was a little in shock.

It was one thing to think about escape, to plan it out in words and thought. It was another to know you were actually free. 

Suki hovered about in a daze, looking a little lost. Hakoda wanted to help her, but he doubted his assistance would be appreciated. Better to leave that to Sokka. 

Sokka was impressed with the airship. He claimed that it was fast, really fast. Almost as fast as Appa. 

It took almost a day to get to their destination. When Hakoda asked Sokka where he was going, Sokka kept grinning and saying, “You’ll see.”

Hakoda could see why he kept it a secret when they got there. Their faces were probably a sight to behold. 

It was an Air Temple. It had to be. The buildings hung down from the cliff face, soaring in reverse, and effortlessly beautiful mockery of gravity. Thin staircases wound their way around the buildings, empty fountains and statues with a strange elegance that Hakoda hadn’t thought rock could possess. 

The temple, (if it could even be called a temple, with how big it was. City might have been a better word.) was stunning. Massive, and graceful, and a marvel of engineering, Hakoda couldn’t help but feel awed. 

But a quick glance at Suki’s aching expression, and he couldn’t help but wonder what she looked so crushed about. 

So when Sokka slipped away from Suki to prepare for landing, Hakoda slipped over to the younger girl. He stalled for a second, trying to scrape together a question. He settled for, “Is everything alright?”

Suki kept staring out the window. She gave a hollow laugh. “It’s gorgeous,” she said quietly. 

Hakoda looked out in time to see a fountain coiling down in reverse, surrounded by delicate balconies. “Yes,” he said, confused. “It is.”

Suki smiled, and it hung on her face, a lantern too heavy for its drooping metal hook. “It’s enormous,” she said. She reached out, tracing a finger over the windowsill. “There must have been thousands of them,” she whispered.

Hakoda’s heart dropped into his stomach, and he was struck by the sudden urge to double over and retch. He looked out of the window, and ached under the new understanding of the sheer amount of loss curled into the foundations of these ageless buildings. 

_ (The last airbender,  _ Sokka had told him once. Hakoda wondered if these buildings would stay empty until they fell into complete ruin. Had these canyons been full of singing once? Hakoda would never know.)

“Yes,” he said quietly. “There must have been a lot of them.”

Five minutes later, they landed, and Sokka was yanking them through the airship excitedly. 

Hakoda walked out, and there was Katara. Her face lit up like the moon when she saw him, and she came racing at him, and then both of Hakoda’s children were back under his arms. 

\--

It ended, like all good things do. 

It ended as so many things did in this war. With flames, and fighting, and choices that ached between Hakoda’s ribs. 

Airships came, bearing Fire Nation soldiers and too many bombs, and the Western Air Temple was crumbling around them. 

(Months later, Hakoda would catch Katara holding Aang as he sobbed, both of their eyes closed as she whispered,  _ it’s not your fault,  _ over and over again.

It would be just another thing Aang had lost.)

Appa wouldn’t go into the tunnel Toph and Haru made, and they were going to have to try flying out. And Hakoda knew.

This was the thing about loving people destined for greater things. Eventually, they would always have to go. You could never hold on to them for as long as you wanted. They weren’t yours to keep.

This was the thing about loving people destined to change the world. They belonged to the world, to themselves, to each other. Not to you. Never to you. 

Hakoda had known for a while that his children weren’t his to keep. It didn’t change the fact that it hurt.

Sokka spoke grimly about splitting up, and after enough yelling for her common sense to rise to the surface again, Katara agreed. Hakoda hugged both of them separately, and watched them run back to the bison, and hoped against hope that this wouldn’t be the last time he ever saw them.

Appa shot away into the sky, carrying Hakoda’s world away with him. Sokka and Katara never looked back. Hakoda stood in the mouth of the tunnel for as long as he dared, staring after them and aching down to his bedrock and infinitely deeper.

Then Teo shouted, “Be depressed later, Hakoda! They’re badasses and they’ve got this! But we gotta go  _ now!” _

Hakoda turned and raced back into the tunnel, Haru leading them all with furious thrusts of his fists. His face was set in a snarl, and his eyes shimmered at the edges, his movements more aggressive than they strictly had to be, and Hakoda thought maybe they were all tired of leaving everyone behind.

They got to the airship, and Teo figured it out fairly quickly. They were in the air in about six minutes, and leaving.

They were chased by one of the other airships for a few hours, but eventually they lost them. 

A week later, they crashed the damaged airship onto a remote shore, shoved the broken carcass of the machine into the waves, and hiked up to a city with truly impressive walls for as small as it was. It had lasted a long while since the last occupation, and it was more than willing to take on more manpower.

It was almost a month later when they heard the rumors about the group that had broken out of a fortified prison near the capital of the Fire Nation. That same month, Hakoda sent a letter to the city they were supposed to be in. Two weeks after that, Hakoda received a letter in return addressed to  _ ‘My first moron,’  _ and signed,  _ ‘Bato’. _

They had broken out of jail, and were on the way to him. Almost another month had passed before the ship pulled up by the shore, decked in blue and green.

The Duke reunited with Pipsqueak in a hug that he firmly denied involved tears. Teo and Haru fell into their respective fathers’ arms as soon as they could. 

Bato slipped through the crowd, grinning at Hakoda. There was a new scar twisting over his forehead. Hakoda walked up to him, trying not to cry, and said, “Took you long enough.”

Bato snorted. “Says the man who’s fifteen year old had to break him out of jail.”

“Hey,” Hakoda protested. “MY son and two other very intimidating teenagers.”

Bato laughed. “Oh, my mistake,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “You had  _ three  _ teenagers break you out. Much better.”

Hakoda let out a shaky laugh. “I almost missed you dragging my face through the mud,” he said. 

Bato’s smile grew soft. He pulled Hakoda into a hug. “I missed you too, ‘Koda.”

Hakoda closed his eyes, and smiled,and the oceans of sand behind his tongue receded a bit under the new water. And everything was a little more okay. 

\----

Sozin’s Comet came and went. It was a night like any other in the city Hakoda was coming to love. 

Hakoda didn’t have to fight to the death. He didn’t have to watch flames consume a forest like so many ravaging beasts. He didn’t sit up with the sunrise and cry. 

He didn’t change the world that night. But when the announcers came through during the next month ordering the retreat of all Fire Nation troops under the authority of Fire Lord Zuko, he knew that someone else had.

\----

Hakoda spent months going back and forth. He kept flicking back and forth between the guard center that was no longer strictly necessary and the small neighborhood in which most of their group was staying, his mind anywhere but there. 

Actually, not just anywhere. Hakoda couldn’t pull his mind away from a palace in the middle of the Fire Nation, full of diplomats and workers and firebenders. And his children.

It took almost three months for Bato to get fed up enough with it to yell at him, which really was longer than Hakoda expected. 

They were in the middle of walking down the city wall for the millionth time, and Hakoda must have grown too obvious in his drifting, because Bato groaned and punched him in the shoulder so hard Hakoda staggered and almost fell off the wall. 

Hakoda yelped, and twisted back around to glare at Bato once he had regained his balance. “What was that for?” 

Bato leveled him with a glare to put Hakoda’s to shame. “By Tui and La, you absolutely hopeless coward,” he said, exasperated. “Just send them a damn letter. It’ll at least be an interruption from your constant moping.”

Hakoda’s jaw dropped. “I’m not moping!” he exclaimed defensively. 

“That’s hilarious. Much better than your usual jokes. Tell me another one.”

Hakoda scowled, but he didn’t try to keep arguing. It never did any good. Not with Bato, anyway. 

In the absence of arguing, doubt crept in. It was a familiar feeling at this point. Hakoda could never quite banish from his mind Katara’s face, streaked with tears and contorted with fury. He could never stop feeling the throb of a broken nose, or the weight of Suki’s glare. He could never seem to stop hearing Katara shouting about him running, and running, and never stopping. 

“What if they don’t want to hear from me?” Hakoda said quietly.

Bato looked at him. Sometimes, Bato looked so very old. Or maybe he just looked tired. Hakoda wasn’t sure there was much of a difference anyway. 

“If you never ask,” Bato said quietly, “You’ll never know. And if you never find out, you’ll always regret it. If there’s one thing this war has taught me, it’s that you take the time you are given. You take every second of it. Regretting that you didn't have enough time is a lot better than regretting wasting the time you were given.”

Hakoda let out a slow breath, rolling Bato’s words over his tongue. “Not this war,” he said.

Bato raised an eyebrow. “What?” he asked.

Hakoda smiled. “Not this war.” He looked up at the sky. It seemed so far away. “The last war. It’s done now.”

He let out a deep breath. “They ended it.”

Bato sighed, and it sounded tired. It sounded proud. “Yes,” he said quietly. “They did. And do you know what soldiers do at the end of a war?”

Hakoda peeled his eyes away from the endless sky in favor of Bato’s equally endless eyes. “What?”

Bato smiled at him, free and endless. “They go home.”

\----

Hakoda sent a letter. 

A month later, he got one back.

\----

Hakoda shifted in place where he was settled on the deck. It felt good to be back on a ship after so long, even if it was headed to a place that he would have voluntarily burned to the ground half a year ago. But he would have gone anywhere if it meant seeing Sokka and Katara again. 

They were only a few days out from the capitol now, and Hakoda could feel the tension mounting. Sure, there was a new Fire Lord now. But what if things hadn’t changed as much as they hoped? 

Hakoda kept having to pull men aside and stop them from shouting with stern warnings about how they were coming in as guests, and the war was over, and things were changing, so they needed to change too. 

It was not fun, to say the least. 

But they were in an unusually long stretch of calm right now, so Hakoda was sitting on the deck with the wind in his face, tracing the edge of his thumb along the crease of a fold in the letter he could probably draw in his sleep now.

Hakoda had sent two letters to the Fire Nation capital a month earlier. One had been from the chief of the Southern Water Tribe, a formal congratulations on the new position of the Fire Lord and a missive saying the Southern Water Tribe intended to work with the Fire Nation in efforts to repair the state of the world.

The other had been from Hakoda, to his children. He had gotten a response back from both. 

One had been a thank you from the new Fire Lord, saying he looked forward to them working together, and formally inviting him to the diplomatic meetings already taking place. 

The other was from two halves of Hakoda’s whole world.

The paper it came on was thick and a little worn around the edges, as if it had been sitting under things on a desk before it was used. The ink was a dark blue of some kind, and there was a small stain on the uppermost right corner, as if from some kind of soup.

_ Dad,  _ it opened.

_ In case you couldn’t tell, this is Katara writing. I was going to let Sokka do it, but we figured you might actually like to be able to read it. _

At this place, there was a large splat of ink spraying across the page, as if Sokka had tried to snatch the pen from her. The second and third times he had reread it, Hakoda had sat there, laughing uproariously at the image of Sokka and Katara wrestling for the pen.

_ We got your letter. You should really be here anyway for the reconstruction meetings.  _

_ Sokka has told me it’s absolutely necessary for you to know that last week I almost choked out a Fire Nation nobleman, though I don’t see how that’s related to anything. He thinks you’ll think it’s funny. Which may be fair.  _

_ Anyway. You said you wanted to come, but you only would if we wanted you there.  _

_ That’s really nice, but you kind of have to be here, because you’re the chief. Our emotions don’t have much say in the fact that the world needs fixing, and you have to help do that. Thank you, though. _

_ Sokka and I have done some talking, and there are some things you need to know.  _

_ First, you should know that when you left, you really hurt us. We felt like you had abandoned us, and maybe that was a little bit of an overreaction, but neither of us are even seventeen yet, so I think we deserve to be a little overemotional sometimes.  _

_ Second, you should know that while you were gone, we really missed you, and the fact that we missed you kind of made us mad too.  _

_ Third, you should know that the whole time you were gone, we were wondering where you were, and what you were doing, and when you were coming back. That’s kind of how missing people goes, I guess.  _

_ Fourth, Sokka wants you to know that everything going down at the palace is awesome, and that he’s waiting for Toph to punch a diplomat. As you can probably guess, one of my main jobs in meetings with said diplomats is to keep Toph from punching people.  _

_ But, we’re making a difference. We’re making things better. It’s everything we ever wanted, and more. Even if sometimes it makes us want to bash our heads open.  _

_ Fifth, you should know that we made it through the last battle fairly intact. Sokka broke his leg, but I’ve had some time to work on that. He’s barely even limping on bad days anymore. I’m fine. A few bruises and burns, but nothing major, which is more than I could have hoped for. We wanted to tell you, because it seemed like the kind of thing you would be worrying about. _

_ Sixth, you should know that Zuko and Aang are doing everything in their power to help as many people as they can. We know that’s something you would worry about, but you don’t have to. This Fire Lord is a good one. And Sokka would like it to be on the record that even if he weren’t I would be able to beat him up. _

_ Finally, we want you to know that, yes, we want you to come. Even if you didn’t have to, we would want you to.  _

_ You don’t know us anymore. Not really. But we want you to. We want to be family with you again, even if the way to do it is going to be messy. We love you, and we care about you, and we want you in our lives.  _

_ We missed you every day you were gone, and when you were back we missed what we used to have. We can’t promise everything will be the same. We can’t promise anything will be the same. But we can promise that we’ll be here.  _

_ We want you to be a part of our big, crazy, messy family. By the way, I’m afraid you’re stuck with the others now, because they’re stuck with us. We would say sorry, but we’re not, because they’re awesome.  _

_ You can come, and we’ll be waiting for you when you get here. We want to get to know you again, and we want you to know us. We missed you, and we love you. _

_ I know that’s a lot, so, sorry. On the bright side, I kept you from being subjected to Sokka’s handwriting. You’re welcome.  _

_ Tell Bato and the others hello for us. We love you. _

Both of them had signed it. Katara’s name was signed with the same elegance as the rest of her words. Sokka’s name was little more than a purposeful scribble. Hakoda loved it.

The letter had ached, in a good way. Two days after he had gotten it, he had left with Bato and a small crew of his most diplomatic men to serve as delegates for the meetings they would surely have to attend.

The letter was soft around the folds now from how many times Hakoda had opened and closed it, rereading it or just fingering the paper signed with his children’s love. 

The words inked onto the page were painfully true. Hakoda didn’t know them anymore. But with that painful truth came the promise of a second chance, and that was enough for him. 

Two days later, the ship sailed past the Gates of Azulon. Except they were no longer flanked by the imposing statues of the former Fire Lord. The body of the statues still stood, but the impressive metalwork of the faces had been scrunched up and shifted into crude images that were vaguely reminiscent of Zuko’s face. 

Hakoda knew Toph’s metalbending when he saw it, and he and Bato spent almost five minutes howling with laughter about it. 

It was strange to simply sail through the gates instead of blast through the underwater channels in submarines. It was strange, to simply be done fighting. 

Their ship docked, and Hakoda took a second to marvel at the array of ships in the harbor. Earth Kingdom green sat beside Fire Nation red, and beside that sat the blue of the Northern Water Tribe. Hakoda stood on the deck, breathing the humid air, and trying not to cry. It was getting better. Everything was getting better.

A young man and woman dressed in red began walking up the deck to their boat. They stopped a few feet from the gangplank. The woman stepped forward, placing one open hand above her closed fist and bowing to them. “Forgive us,” she called up in the language of the Earth Kingdom. “We were unaware a ship was arriving today from the Northern Earth Kingdom. May we ask what town you are here to represent so we might get you settled?”

Hakoda and Bato walked down to the deck after Tanuk shooed them away so he could finish tying up the boat. “I’m sorry,” Hakoda said as best he could in the language of the Fire Nation. It might be easier to speak in the Earth Kingdom language, since she clearly understood it, but he was determined to be as respectful as he could. 

“We aren’t here to represent a city. Not from the Earth Kingdom, at least. I am Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe.”

The woman’s eyes widened, her jaw loosening in shock. The man with her openly gawked, his jaw dropping. Hakoda thought he heard him whisper, “Holy shit.”

Bato bit his lip to hide his laughter. 

The woman, to her credit, recovered quickly. “Of course, sir,” she said. “You are Master Katara and Representative Sokka’s father?”

Hakoda swallowed, reeling a little. “Yes, I am.”

The woman nodded. “Forgive me,” she said. “My name is Li Shen. We were not expecting you for another few days.”

“We hit a favorable current,” Bato said.

Li Shen nodded. “That is wonderful. You will have a few days then before your first meeting, I believe. Master Katara and Representative Sokka will be excited.”

The man leaned forward, bumping Li Shen’s elbow. “You can just call them Sokka and Katara,” he muttered. “They said we could.”

Li Shen looked as if she would like nothing more than to smack him upside the head, but wasn’t going to because she was trying to be professional. “This is a work setting, Jeng Hou,” she hissed back at him. “Would it kill you to take your job seriously for once?”

Hakoda raised an eyebrow. “You’ve met my children?” he asked, surprised. 

Li Shen looked back at him, smiling a little apologetically. “Almost everyone has met your children, Chief Hakoda. They have little regard for the long established tradition of separating the spheres of lower and higher workers.”

“None of that group does,” Jeng Hou said with a snicker.

This time, Li Shen actually smacked him. Then she gave Hakoda a strained smile. “I must apologize for my coworker. He has little tact or regard for professionalism in a work space.”

“He’s fine,” Hakoda said. “What did he mean?”

Li Shen paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. “The Fire Lord and his friends,” she said slowly, “are extraordinary and unusual young adults in many respects, none the least that they frequently choose to voluntarily interact with and spend free time with the capital staff. You must understand that a Fire Lord has not done anything like this in human memory.”

Hakoda blinked, shocked. “They have friends among the staff?”

Li Shen gave him a half-smile. “There are many people among the staff of the capital, particularly the palace, that might claim that title, yes.”

“Pretty sure half the palace would die for them,” Jeng Hou said with a grin. 

Li Shen gave him a dry look. 

“And the other half might kill them,” a man pulling crates off a nearby ship called down. “It balances nicely.”

“Ling,” Li Shen called, her eyes flashing. “You'd better be glad we’re in a public space, or I’d set you on fire for that.”

“Schedule an appointment,” Ling called back, dropping the rate and racing back onto the boat, laughing, to avoid Li Shen’s glare.

Hakoda was struck by a similar feeling to one he had experienced in a prison months earlier. The Fire Nation had been all of his nightmares for so long. But they were just… people. 

Li Shen turned back to him, smiling tersely. “I must apologize for all of my coworkers, as I am clearly the only one of us to have any shred of dignity.”

“Hey!” someone called from the deck of the ship next to them. “We have dignity!”

Another voice called down, presumably to the first voice, “No we don’t! Yesterday I saw you drop your fish, and pick it up to eat it.”

“I wasn’t going to waste it!”

“You don’t know where that dirt has  _ been!” _

Li Shen was beginning to look as if she would like nothing more than to dive into the bay and let herself drown. 

Bato, taking pity on her, said, “Is there somewhere we should be headed, ma’am?”

Li Shen nodded. “You and your men will most likely be allowed to choose where you would like to stay, but for now you should go on ahead into the city and to the palace. I believe that Master Katara and Representative Sokka are in a meeting, but I can send a runner ahead if you would like.”

Hakoda exchanged glances with Bato. It was still strange, that his children were involved in some of the most important meetings in the world. 

“I don’t want to interrupt them.”

Li Shen’s mouth twitched in an aborted smile. “If I may, sir. They are currently in a budget meeting. Rather dry stuff, if Representative Sokka’s loud complaints in public spaces are anything to judge by.”

Bato snorted. 

“They might welcome an interruption,” Li Shen continued. “And, sir. They are rather excited to see you.”

Hakoda raised an eyebrow, trying to keep a grip on his suddenly racing heartbeat. “Are they?”

“They’re going crazy,” Jeng Hou informed them. “I think they might be more upset if you didn’t interrupt them.”

Li Shen’s mouth flattened. “Blunt as Jeng Hou’s statement may be,” she said, “it might not be entirely inaccurate. Would you like me to send a runner?”

Hakoda glanced at Bato. Bato rolled his eyes and stepped on Hakoda’s foot. Hakoda bit down a yelp, and turned back to Li Shen and Jeng Hou, who was trying very hard not to laugh. “Yes,” he said. “If it isn’t too much trouble.”

Li Shen smiled. “Of course not,” she said. “I’ll send down a runner, and someone to escort you up to the palace.”

“We know where it is,” Hakoda said. 

Bato winced. 

Jeng Hou snorted. 

Li Shen’s lips flattened. 

“I am quite aware,” she said dryly. “Though you might find it a bit harder to navigate today, seeing as no one has been evacuated.”

Hakoda winced. Of course Li Shen didn’t want him flaunting the invasion. Her cool words had gotten her point across. Not everyone might take it as well as she had. 

“Of course,” he said. “Forgive me.”

The corner of her lips quirked up. “You are forgiven. Would you like to unpack any supplies you might have now?”

Hakoda glanced back at the ship. “Will they be safe here?”

“Nobody will touch your things,” Jeng Hou promised. “It would be a violation of the neutrality policy of the port, and it would make some serious problems for whoever did it. The last person who tried to take a ship that wasn’t theirs got sorted out by General Kaina herself.” He shuddered theatrically.

Bato looked at Hakoda. “Good enough for me,” he said. 

Hakoda turned back to Li Shen. “We’ll leave our things for now.”

Li Shen nodded, smiling. “Then follow me, sir,” she said. She turned around and began walking briskly back down the deck. 

Hakoda and Bato followed her. There were almost five boats per dock, and there had to be at least a hundred docks. The docks were all busy, people running back and forth, carrying crates or pulling up hauls of fish or ferrying messages back and forth. Hakoda didn’t think he would ever stop being impressed with large cities. 

Li Shen and Jeng Hou slipped through the crowd easily, and Hakoda and Bato struggled to keep up with their quick pace. People in red swarmed up and down the docks, and more than a few of them called out greetings to each other, or to Li Shen and Jeng Hou. Even Li Shen called back greetings for them. Hakoda was again struck by just how human it all was.

Li Shen guided them up the beach swarming with people, pulling up next to a building of reddish stone with sweeping eaves. She leaned in an open window, rapping on the inside of the frame. Almost immediately, an older man with a friendly smile shot up. 

“Well!” he said cheerfully. “If it isn’t my favorite greeter!”

Li Shen grinned at him. “I’m only your favorite because I don’t give visitors lip.”

“Still my favorite,” he said, smiling. 

Li Shen laughed. 

“I need a runner and an escort. Is Taya available?”

The man’s eyebrows raised. “Who exactly is deserving of our fastest runner, eh?” he said curiously, grinning. 

“Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe.”

The man looked a bit shocked. He leaned out the window, his eyes landing on Hakoda and Bato, trying not to get run over by the crowd. “The crazy’s dad?”

Li Shen rolled her eyes. “They’re not crazy, and yes.”

The man pulled back, grinning. “Didn’t mean it was a bad thing. But anyone who can pull a wrecked ship from the seabed is crazy.”

He rapped the windowframe Li Shen was still leaning on. “Be right back,” he said. He pulled away, slipping through a sliding door behind him into the main building. 

A minute later, he came back in and said, “I got Taya and Hashika. That good?”

Li Shen smiled. “Yup. Thanks, Mishan.”

Mishan waved her off. “Go, shoo. Do more good work.”

Li Shen rolled her eyes, smiling, and pushed off the window frame. 

Within seconds, a door opened and two women came out, bickering good-naturedly. 

“I’m telling you, if you ask him out, he’ll say yes,” the taller one said. 

“Which is exactly why I don’t ask,” the other shot back. “Have you ever seen him interact with another girl? No. That’s because he’s a jerk, and that is never attractive, no matter how hot you think he is.”

_ “Wenshinas,”  _ Li Shen said, clearly amused. “Let’s focus, shall we?”

“We are focusing,” argued the tall one. “Focusing on Hashika’s absolutely  _ dismal  _ love life.”

Hashika rolled her eyes. “You’re so overdramatic.”

Li Shen snapped her fingers. “Let’s leave Hashika’s love life out of work, regardless of how allegedly dismal it is.”   


The other girl shot upright. “Allegedly?” she cried. “Li Shen! Do you know something I don’t?”   


“I know lots of things you don’t, Taya. Now, would you get to your job please?”

Taya glared at her. “I’ll peel it out of you later,” she said, pointing at Li Shen threateningly. 

“Consider me terrified,” Li Shen said dryly.

Taya rolled her eyes, huffing. She didn’t manage to fully stamp out her smile. She tossed her long braid over her shoulder and smiled at Hakoda. “I understand I’m supposed to be finding Sokka and Katara,” she said. “Do you want me to tell them anything? You know, besides the fact that you’re here.”

Hakoda paused. Then he said, “To not leave the meeting if they shouldn’t. But if they can, I’d like to see them as soon as possible.”

Taya grinned. She placed one hand over her closed fist and bowed. “Of course,” she said. 

She glanced back at Li Shen and said, “Have a water bottle ready for me when I get back.”

Li Shen gave a mocking salute. “Yes, sir.”

Taya laughed. Then she spun around and took off, weaving through the crowd effortlessly, her long legs eating up the distance with startling speed. Within seconds she was out of sight. 

Bato whistled. “She’s fast.”

Hashika grinned. “She wouldn’t be a very good runner if she wasn’t.”

Li Shen faced them, and said, “I’m afraid this is when I take my leave,” she said. “But I don’t think I can leave you in better hands. Hashika is one of our best guides.” She smiled. “It has been my pleasure to assist you.”

“Thank you,” Hakoda said sincerely. “You’ve been very helpful.”

Li Shen smiled, bowing to them and then slipping back into the crowd.    


Hashika grinned at them, clapping her hands together. “Alright,” she said happily. “Who’s ready for a tour?”

\--

Following Hashika through the capital was fascinating. The last time he had been there, Hakoda had been taking part in an invasion. He hadn’t really had time to appreciate the scenery. 

But now, with Hashika leading them through the bustling streets swelling with people, he was in awe. The streets and a few of the buildings were made of a glossy black stone, swirling with polished curls. Hardened lava, Hashika explained. It wasn’t called Caldera City for no reason. 

Even the worst buildings had a certain elegance, sweeping up two, three, even four stories into the air. The roofs were tiered, shingles sweeping up in triangular pyramids. Angular eaves protruded from every roof, and delicate engravings curled around ornate doorways. Everywhere were pictures of dragons, and arches, and fountains curling up and dipping back down. The capital was stunning.

Hashika kept up a running commentary as she swept down the street, pointing out fountains, or murals, or markets thrumming with crowds. She recited some pieces of history as easily as breathing. 

And sometimes, more rarely, she would look back at them with narrowed eyes, and hesitantly add in pieces of other history. Here the courtyard where an archer had shot down one of the war’s most brutal generals. There the square where a thousand civilians had led a rebellion only five years into the war. Pieces of history that she recited with nervous eyes and twitching fingers, her voice low and her eyes flicking around as if she half expected to be shot down where she stood for it.

It made Hakoda, absurdly, sad. He had spent so much of his life worrying about what his life would be if Ozai ever ruled him. He had spent no time wondering what it was like for the people he already ruled. 

Watching Hashika glance nervously around at the crowd as she murmured about a woman named Tai Shin, the dissenter who led a coup thirty years into the war that almost killed Azulon, Hakoda thought maybe this war had cost all of them their freedom. 

(He wondered how many people before Hashika had whispered like she had, barely daring to breathe the names of the rebels before them. He wondered how many Fire Nation citizens had laid down their lives fighting their own government, trying to change things just like everyone else. 

He hoped that wherever they were, they could see him now, in Water Tribe blue, and a free man in a red capital.)

It took them nearly ten minutes to get to a stopping point, and by then Hakoda had learned more Fire Nation history than he had his whole life before. Hashika skipped up to a booth by an arched entry, and said, “Hey, Jenshi. How’s it going?”

A woman leaned out, smiling at Hashika. “Well, I had to talk to Yeng Chi, so it could be going better.”

Hashika winced. “Is he still going on about…?”

“How he could beat Lani in a fight? Yeah. The day he actually does it though is the day I eat my own shoe.”

Hashika laughed. 

Jenshi grinned. “Taya said you were coming. I waved her through about five minutes ago. She said you were coming with someone. Who you got?”

Hashika grinned. “Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe.”

Jenshi’s eyes widened. “No kidding. Sokka and Katara’s dad?”

“Yup. Care to wave us through?”

Jenshi leaned out the window and waved at the guard by the gate, nodding. “You should be good to go,” she said with a smile. She clapped Hashika’s shoulder. “Hey, tell those crazies hi for me.”

Hashika grinned. “Will do.”

Hashika guided them through the gate, pretending not to hear the whispers spreading like ripples from the people who had overheard Hashika and Jenshi talking. People kept shooting Hakoda and Bato glances from the corners of their eyes, or watching them pass. 

Hakoda kept his chin raised. One guard made eye contact with him, and he stared back, keeping his face as full of iron as he could make it. 

The guard’s eyes widened, and he took a step back. Hakoda tried not to be pleased. But, to his surprise, the guard actually laughed a little and muttered to another, “Well, if I didn’t believe he was  _ laonji draina’s  _ father before, I do now. I swear that glare’s a traced copy.”

The other guard began giggling furiously, covering her mouth with her hand. 

Hakoda turned to Hashika. “What did he just mean by that? And why do I feel like I already have a reputation?”

Hashika glanced back at the guard. “Oh, I promise Wek Qing meant no offense. He only meant-” Hashika sighed, then glanced back at Hakoda shrewdly. “How much do you know of the last Agni Kai, exactly?”

Hakoda shifted. “That Fire Lord Zuko won it.”

Hashika gave a tight smile. “And that much is true. Technically, he won the second Princess Azula broke the honor rules. She forfeited by attacking his second.”

Hakoda frowned. “Who was his second?”

Hashika looked at him, her eyebrows raising incredulously. “You didn’t know? Your daughter was his second.”

Hakoda stopped dead. Bato slammed into him. “What?”

Hashika frowned sympathetically. “Before Prince Zuko entered the Agni Kai, he designated Katara as his second. Meaning that if he were seriously injured, she would take his place in the match.”

“Could they do that?” Bato said, surprised. “I mean, since she’s a waterbender. Can she technically participate in a Fire Duel?”

Hashika nodded. “The rules only specify that the first must be a firebender. The second can be a firebender, a nonbender, a waterbender, anything. Princess Azula targeted Katara, and Fire Lord Zuko took the blow. Katara then entered the duel.”

“She won,” Bato said in awe. “Didn’t she?”

Hashika nodded again. “She did. And she did so without brute force. You must understand, for those of us who live in the capital, we have seen little to no bending that is not with fire, let alone water. And for those of us who were still in the capital… 

“Many of us were watching from the safety of the sidelines. I myself witnessed Katara and Fire Lord Zuko’s victory. It was no small feat. I will admit that we didn’t know what she could do. None of us thought she would win. But she did. 

“It was as impressive as it was terrifying. She would not have won if she had a shred less strength or courage. Her victory was nothing short of a miracle.”

“I doubt that,” Bato said quietly. “She’s worked hard to get where she is.”

Hashika tilted her head, looking at him. Her eyes flashed, sparkling with a quiet kind of tiredness. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Not a miracle, then. Just her.”   


0Hakoda closed his eyes, swallowing down his senseless fear.  _ Not a miracle, _ he thought.  _ Just her.  _

“Miracle or not,” Hashika continued. “People were impressed. Few could walk out of a fight with the crown princess relatively unscathed. Somehow or another, we started calling her  _ laonji draina.  _ I believe it translates roughly to ‘water dragon’. 

“Your children are impressive. They are gifted fighters, and have made many friends within the palace and outside of it. So, yes. You feel like you have a reputation because you do. Your reputation is theirs. You will be known, first and foremost, as their father.”

Hakoda let out a slow breath, still reeling. “I suppose there are worse things to be known as.”

Hashika smiled. “Far worse things,” she agreed. “Now come on. Would you like to see your children before sundown? If so, I recommend you hurry up.” Then, grinning, she added, “Slowpoke.”

Hakoda sped up. 

Hashika kept guiding them up through the extensive palace gardens, and kept up her stream of historical information. At one point, she stopped them to point at an empty fountain. 

“You see that one?” she said. “It used to hold a statue of Fire Lord Azulon. And by  _ used to  _ I mean like two weeks ago. Lady Beifong dragged it out to make a ton of tiny little turtleduck statues that she stuck all over the palace. We still haven’t found most of them. I’m fairly certain Lady Suki helped her.” She grinned at them. “I thought you might enjoy that.”

She was right. He did enjoy that.

Within a few minutes, Hashika was guiding them up the palace steps. Later, Hakoda would admire the truly impressive architecture. Right now, his whole world had narrowed down to his pounding pulse and the thrumming knowledge that his children were close.

Hashika trailed up the steps, and said to a guard, “How long ago did Taya come through?”

“Ten minutes or so,” the guard replied. “Who are you guiding?”

This time, Hakoda was prepared for the staring that came after Hashika announced him. He wasn’t prepared for the guard to glance at Hakoda, and break down into laughter. 

“Are we taking bets on how soon they ditch the meeting?”

“That feels mean,” a passing servant girl said. 

Hashika rolled her eyes, grinning, and slipped by them. She stopped in the doorway, and bowed, gesturing Hakoda and Bato in. “On the behalf of Fire Lord Zuko,” she said, sounding more formal than she had the entire time, “it is my pleasure to welcome you to the royal palace.”

Hakoda slipped past her and in. Bato followed him.

They walked out, entering a massive gilded hall. The ceiling soared up above them, light flashing off of mirrors and golden accents and pouring in through huge windows. Hakoda and Bato stood in the doorway, gawking. 

Then barely a second later, across the hall, a woman came smashing through a pair of doors and shouted, “Clear the way! This is a Code Wrecking Ball!”

Everyone in the hall froze. And then exploded into motion. Noblemen were tripping and cursing, servants were snatching up their things and bolting for the edge of the room, people were running for side hallways, and nearly everyone was shouting. The hall looked like a kicked catbeehive. 

A few seconds later, the reason was made perfectly clear. From beyond a corridor at the end of the room, a very loud, very  _ familiar  _ voice shouted, “THAT’S CHEATING!”

Another very familiar voice shouted, “No one likes a sore loser!”

A man swore and dove out of the way just in time for Hakoda to see a flash of blue skirts swing around the corner. Katara leapt off her water platform and began racing through the crowd as fast as her legs could carry her. A second later, Sokka came bolting around the corner, joining Katara in weaving dangerously through the crowd. 

They kept dipping in and out of view in the crowd, weaving ever closer. They both shot out through the crowd at the same time, and Hakoda barely had time to register Katara’s grin and Sokka’s booming laughter before both of them slammed into him at full speed, smashing all three of them to the ground. 

Hakoda grunted as his back hit the floor, his eyes widening. Instinctively, his arms went out, and then he was holding two armfuls of giggling teenager.

Sokka and Katara curled up against him, howling with laughter. 

“I beat you!” Sokka crowed. 

Katara reached over and smacked him. “You did not! I totally won!”

“Liar!”

Even as they argued with each other, they were laughing, choking out the words past their furious giggles. 

Katara looked up at him, grinning so brightly it was like staring into the sun. There was a new scar on her forehead, a small burn streak that shot up into her hairline, and where her arm was curled around him he could feel another new scar. 

Sokka pressed into his other side, his shoulders shaking with laughter, and Hakoda could see his teeth flashing in his smile.

Young, and wearing scars like jewels, and the most beautiful things Hakoda had ever seen.

“Dad,” Katara said seriously. “Tell Sokka I won. I totally hugged you first. Tell him he’s a sore loser.”

“Dad,” Sokka whined. “Come on, back me up. Katara’s a liar, I was totally here first.”

Hakoda let out a startled laugh. “Oh no,” he said. “You aren’t dragging me into what you have clearly placed bets on. Also, it would be inaccurate to say either of you hugged me, when what you clearly did was bowl me over.”

Sokka raised an eyebrow, grinning. “Are you complaining?”

Hakoda leaned down and kissed Sokka’s forehead. “Not for a second.”

Katara burst into giggles again, burying her face in Hakoda’s shoulder and all but suctioning herself to his side. Sokka followed her lead just a few seconds later. 

Hakoda took a deep breath, and squeezed his arms around his children, closing his eyes. 

Maybe he didn’t deserve a second chance. Maybe he had royally screwed things up, and hurt all of them, and maybe things would never be the same again. 

But with his arms around his children, both of them laughing furiously and hugging him while still bickering with each other, Hakoda could believe that there was still time to make things better. 

Maybe things wouldn’t ever be the same again. That would be okay. 

Maybe he didn’t deserve another chance. But it looked like he was getting one anyway. And that was more than okay. 

That was everything. 

(No. That wasn’t everything. But it was the key to Sokka and Katara. And they _ were  _ everything.)

\----

Weeks passed. 

Hakoda kept introducing himself as the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe. It stopped feeling weird to be recognized as Sokka and Katara’s father. 

Katara and Sokka were intimately involved in reconstruction efforts. Sometimes Hakoda felt like they were still doing more than he was, even after the war was over. (Even after they ended it, he kept reminding himself.) Some days, he could even manage to keep a handle on his guilt about it all. 

When they weren’t in meetings, Hakoda was spending time with Sokka and Katara. Which, more often than not, meant Hakoda was spending time with all their friends too. 

He wasn’t complaining for the most part. Watching them interact was as amusing as it was endearing. They loved each other to the moon and back, and it was clear in their every interaction. 

Maybe someday Sokka and Katara could love him like that again. 

Toph’s animosity towards him seemed to have disappeared, so Hakoda chalked her earlier iciness up to stress of a comatose friend. 

Zuko had once had a tense conversation with Hakoda which ended in him all but yelling at Hakoda, telling him that he better not screw things up with Sokka and Katara again because it would break their hearts. It also involved Zuko threatening to sic Toph on Hakoda if it happened. Hakoda believed him, and was accordingly intimidated. 

(Hakoda understood Zuko’s distrust though, he thought. Having Ozai as a father couldn’t have been fun, and he sometimes caught Zuko’s longing looks at Sokka and Katara. In another world, might Sokka and Katara have been like Azula and Zuko? Might Azula and Zuko have been like Sokka and Katara?

Hakoda didn’t like to dwell on it. Some questions had no answers to be found, only pain and fruitless what-ifs. 

But Hakoda saw Aang pester Zuko until he smiled, and he saw Suki and Katara making him almost laugh in meetings, and he saw Sokka and Toph dragging Zuko out to the gardens when he was too stressed, and Hakoda thought Zuko had found a wonderful family anyway.)

Hakoda still caught Suki shooting him glares from the corner of her eye sometimes. But she pushed him bowls at breakfast, and grudgingly nodded at him a few times. Hakoda thought she might be warming up to him.

Aang was perfectly eager to interact with Hakoda. The tiny airbender was bouncy, and eager, and overall a ray of sunshine. (He was also clearly horribly in love with Hakoda’s daughter. Neither of them were subtle, like, at all.) 

He had a gift for diffusing situations, and was excellent at negotiations, due in no small part to the fact that he truly seemed to want to help everyone. 

Actually, all of the children seemed to truly want to help everyone. Hakoda had lost that a long time ago. He admired them for clinging to it, even when it was painful. They were strong in a way Hakoda had never and would never be. Maybe it was out of necessity. Hakoda thought it might just be who they were. 

Rebuilding his relationship with Sokka and Katara was hard. Not that Hakoda had expected it to be easy, necessarily. But it was just exhausting. He wanted to skip to the end, when things made more sense and sometimes it didn’t hurt just to have a conversation.

Turns out life doesn’t work that way. If you want to get to the good part, you have to get through the less good part first. And it's up to you to decide if it's worth it. 

(Sokka and Katara would always be worth it.)

Sometimes Katara still ended up yelling at him, and once, memorably, Sokka broke down into furious shouting and hot tears before vanishing, presumably to go find Katara. 

Hakoda’s children had stopped turning to him for comfort a long time ago. They turned to each other instead. 

So, yes. Rebuilding the world was messy, and rebuilding relationships was even messier. Hakoda kept remembering Katara’s letter. 

_ You don’t know us anymore,  _ she had written.  _ But we want you to. We want to be family with you again, even if the way to do it is going to be messy.  _

They had lived up to the promise of messy. And they had lived up to the promise of trying anyway. 

(Hakoda now knew that Katara hated papaya, and that she loved dancing, no matter how much she denied it, and he knew that she smiled even when she was sad sometimes because she felt like she couldn’t afford to fall apart. He knew most of the time, more and more, she was smiling just because she was happy.

Hakoda now knew that Sokka hated asparagus, and that he loved beating Zuko at mancala, and he knew that Sokka sat up on the roof sometimes and stared at the moon until he was numb enough that it didn’t hurt anymore. He knew that most of the time, more and more, Sokka could look up at the sky and know that it wasn’t his fault. He knew that Sokka was learning to smile with the night instead of just throbbing with it.)

Things were getting better, albeit slowly. 

Almost two months after Hakoda arrived at the Fire Nation, he found himself in his fourth massive formal party. Or was it his fifth? They were all blurring together. 

He and Bato were standing up against the side of the huge ballroom, trying not to get pulled into conversation with any of the noblemen. Sometimes Hakoda seriously thought that interacting with the noblemen might be his punishment for being a not-so-great father. 

Then he remembered that all of the children had to deal with them too, and he thought they might just be a punishment in general. 

Regardless, he and Bato were hovering at the edges of the room, trying to avoid speaking with anyone else.   
Sometimes the two of them swept in and took up a conversation when one of their kids started looking too panicked. They were always rewarded with grateful smiles, and the child in question slipping into the crowd and fleeing, abandoning them to their fate. 

(Hakoda had long ago admitted to himself that Sokka and Katara were Bato’s children too. But when had Hakoda started thinking about all of Sokka and Katara’s friends as their kids too? He really wasn’t sure. 

Maybe it was the time he stayed up with Aang because he just needed someone to be there, and Katara and all the others were already asleep. Maybe it was the time he took Suki dancing, and she smiled during the spins, and couldn’t quite hide her happiness. Maybe it was when all of them, Sokka and Katara included, fell asleep half on top of him, and he didn’t move all night because he couldn’t bear to wake them. 

Whenever it was, Hakoda had started thinking of them as his kids too. He couldn’t bring himself to dislike it for a second.)

They couldn’t ever do as much as they wanted for their kids, but when they could do small things to lighten the load, they did so happily. They were war heroes and master fighters, yes, but they were still kids. Sometimes they deserved to just vanish from parties. Like they had this time.

Hence why Bato and Hakoda were stubbornly avoiding everyone they could. They didn’t have to interfere anywhere. They were just enjoying the peace.

Bato was in the middle of telling Hakoda that he was bonkers, that Hei Min had never eaten seven jalapeños in a row, that was crazy, when Iroh slipped up next to them, smiling demurely. 

Hakoda hadn’t been sure what to make of General Iroh at first. He was Zuko’s uncle, and Zuko clearly adored him. But he was also the General who laid siege to Ba Sing Se. He had served the Fire Nation for years, murdering innocent people, destroying lives. Hakoda hadn’t been sure what to feel about him. 

But Hakoda had certainly done horrible things in the name of the war too, and Iroh clearly loved their children as much as Hakoda and Bato did, so they had a strange kind of friendly relationship. 

Sometimes, Hakoda truly wondered if he had just adopted four kids and was now sharing custody of all six of his children with Bato and Iroh. He was also fairly certain that if he hadn’t chosen to share Sokka and Katara, Iroh would have dueled him for partial custody. Also possibly the staff of the Fire Nation palace? 

Honestly, there seemed to be a line. Stand here to fight Sokka and Katara’s father for partial custody. You may be waiting a while.

“Hello Chief Hakoda,” Iroh said pleasantly.

Hakoda nodded, smiling. “General Iroh. How can I help you?”

Iroh bowed a little, his hands tucked into his sleeves. “It appears that some of our guests seem to be looking for the Fire Lord, the Avatar, and their friends. Unfortunately, they seem to have mysteriously vanished.”

Bato snorted into his drink, almost spilling it all down his front. He looked at Hakoda, his eyes sparkling.  _ Mysteriously,  _ he mouthed, clearly fighting laughter. 

Hakoda bit down a smile. “How strange.”

Iroh set his feet in the way that meant he was trying not to laugh. “Indeed,” he said. “Some of our prestigious guests are asking after them, and Lady Mai and the Kyoshi warriors have vanished as well. We seem to have no way of locating them.”

Bato lifted his hand in front of his mouth, hunching his shoulders. He was shaking with laughter.

“Imagine that,” Hakoda said, sounding vaguely choked in a dismal attempt to keep himself from joining Bato.

Iroh smiled mischievously. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to attempt to find them. I am sure they could be cajoled into returning.”

They most certainly could  _ not.  _ And Iroh knew this. He might as well have brazenly told Hakoda to find them and tell them to go further into hiding. 

“Certainly,” Hakoda said, his shoulders shaking with suppressed snickers. “I will do my best.”

He turned to Bato, raising an eyebrow. “You want to come, or are you going to be okay here?”

Bato grinned. “Go,” he said, waving Hakoda off. “I’ll get plastered. It’ll help with the meeting tomorrow.”

“Will it?”

“Pain is pain, no matter which form it comes in,” Iroh said cheerfully. “And a poison chosen is often better than one inflicted.”

Bato pointed at Iroh. “What he said.”

Hakoda squinted at him. “That made sense to you?”

Bato shrugged. “Sure. He’s saying at least we’re choosing a hangover headache over the inevitable meeting headache.”

Hakoda shook his head, snickering. “Suit yourself.” 

He waved goodbye to Bato and Iroh, and slipped out of the ballroom. He let out a sigh of relief once he was out in the hallway. It was noticeably cooler than the ballroom. The difference in temperature was refreshing. 

After a moment rejoicing in the cool air, Hakoda began walking down the hallway towards Toph’s room, which was closest. 

The hallways were mostly devoid of staff, as those not occupied in the kitchen were working the party or doing their usual tasks out of the way. But Hakoda still passed a few of them. He nodded respectfully as he passed by, and they nodded back, the more daring even shooting him tiny smiles. 

As he passed by an opening into a garden, he saw a few servant girls dancing barefoot in the fountain, splashing each other with water and laughing furiously. Beside the fountain were a few boys sprawled out over the ground, laughing and slapping each other playfully.

Hakoda smiled, and slipped past the opening. He continued down the hallway, their laughter echoing after him. 

It still felt like a miracle most of the time. That people could dance in fountains and throw water at each other and laugh brazenly in the Fire Lord’s palace. It still felt like a miracle that his children could swap clothes of four different colors effortlessly, that they could be so different, and their group could hold no animosity at all. It was still a miracle to him that the war was over. It was over, and the next generation was making things better. 

_ I hope you can be happier than we were,  _ he thinks sometimes.  _ I hope you can be better than we were.  _

He closed his eyes, and laughter rippled down the corridor, and he thought they already were. 

Toph’s room was empty, so he moved on. He checked Sokka’s room, and then Katara’s. Both were empty. 

But when he got to the corridor with Suki’s room, muffled laughter echoed down the hallway, and a light issued from under her door. There came the distinct sound of Toph cackling and Zuko yelling, closely followed by a crash and Sokka’s rhythmic chanting that usually meant he was egging someone on.

Hakoda rolled his eyes and bit his lip, failing to fully stifle his smile. He walked up and knocked on the door. 

Immediately, all noises behind the door stopped. 

There was a thump, and a bump, and the sounds of several people hissing at each other. 

“Alright,” Hakoda said, amused, rapping on the door again. “I know you’re in there. Open up. I’m not going to drag you back to the party.”

For a moment there was silence. Then footsteps. Toph swung the door open, staring at him aggressively. Scattered around the room were the children. Sokka and Zuko were frozen, their limbs tangled together as if they had been wrestling. Suki and Mai were perched on the windowsill like strange birds. Aang was halfway through putting Katara’s hair up, both of them sitting in the middle of a huge pile of blankets and pillows. 

Aang, Katara, and Zuko were all either smiling nervously or frozen in place, all of them looking distinctly guilty. Toph, Sokka, Suki, and Mai all looked stubbornly unapologetic. 

“We are not going back to that party, if that’s what you’re here for,” Toph said firmly.

“Don’t be silly,” a new voice chimed in. “He just said he  _ wasn’t  _ here to do that.”

Hakoda looked up to see Ty Lee hanging from the chandelier like a batwolf. She waved at him cheerfully, and he waved back, smiling bemusedly. 

“Well,” Sokka said. “If you aren’t here to drag us back to our inevitable deaths by boredom, what are you here for?”

Hakoda smiled. “You all are my escape excuse.”

Mai’s lips quirked up a miniscule bit. “Stealing my out, are you?”

Hakoda smiled back at her. “Borrowing it.”

Hakoda wasn’t sure what to make of Mai, but Zuko adored her, and strangely, Mai seemed to enjoy hanging out with all of the other children. Katara loved her, and she was perplexingly close with Aang and Ty Lee. 

He didn’t ever know how to interact with her, but the other kids loved her, so Hakoda had decided to just roll with it. 

Hakoda turned back to the others. “Well, I thank you all for my escape,” he said with a smile. “I would advise barricading yourself in just in case they send someone slightly more determined after you.”

Aang sniffed dramatically. “I ended the war, and the Fire Nation is still hunting me,” he said mournfully.

Suki and Mai snorted in tandem. Katara started giggling so hard Aang had to lean his hands forward so he wouldn’t pull her hair. Toph launched a chunk of rock at him which he dodged effortlessly. “You’re so dramatic,” she said. 

Zuko snorted. “Pot calling the kettle black.”

Toph launched another chunk of stone. This time it hit its target. Zuko yelped indignantly, and Mai started laughing at him. 

Hakoda smiled at them. “I can leave if you’d like-”

“No!” Katara cried, grinning. “Stay! Come on! I need someone else to help me regulate the chaos.”

Suki threw a pillow at her. “You barely regulate anything,” she said. “You just laugh at us most of the time.”

Katara threw the pillow back, grinning. “Jeez, Suki. Just because you’re right doesn’t mean you should call me out on it.”

Laughter rippled out across the room. 

Hakoda smiled. “Alright,” he said. “I can stay if you want me to.”

Katara grinned at him. Warmth bloomed in his stomach, and he thought maybe things were okay.

“Wait,” Sokka said. “So we’re done pausing now?”

“NO!” Zuko yelled. “LET ME OU-”

Sokka let out a shriek of happiness, and flipped both himself and Zuko over into the pillow pile, narrowly avoiding Aang and Katara and immediately resuming wrestling. 

They all started laughing. 

Aang twisted Katara’s braid up onto her head. He pulled out a few pins from somewhere, and began sliding them into her hair one at a time. He finished and cried, “Tada!”

Katara grinned, and immediately began shaking her head furiously. Her hair bobbed, but didn’t come loose. Katara grinned up at Aang, craning her neck backwards. “I will never understand how you make them so secure.”

Aang grinned back at her. “Airbender’s secret,” he said. Then he swooped down, kissing her cheek. Both of them dissolved into laughter. 

Suki and Mai began arm wrestling, and Toph flew over to cheer them on. Actually, she was just yelling excitedly at both of them, but whatever. 

Ty Lee swung down from the chandelier and tackled Aang and Katara. All three of them fell back into the pillow pile, smashing into Sokka and Zuko, and all five of them went sprawling in a tangle of limbs and laughter and reckless happiness. 

Hakoda smiled, and his face felt like it might crack under it all.  _ Miracles,  _ he thought. 

Later that night, long after the others had fallen asleep Hakoda found himself sitting on the balcony with Sokka and Katara, all of them staring up at the stars. Sokka and Katara were sitting on either side of him, their legs stretched out, smiling tiredly up at the stars. 

Struck by a sudden urge to speak, he said, “Do you know what’s cool?”

Both of his children looked over at him. “What?” Sokka said.

Hakoda swung his head back and forth, smiling at them. “You two are named after legends, you know.”

Katara tilted her head at him. “Yeah. Mom told us about them.”

Hakoda smiled at her. “I just think it’s funny. Your mother and I named you after legends, and then you became legends. Your names will die where they began. With the stars.”

Katara looked up at the sky, and Hakoda watched the cosmos spin in her eyes. She snorted, and it sounded bittersweet. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I guess they will.”

“Weird,” Sokka agreed, staring at the stars. “It still doesn’t feel real most of the time.”

Hakoda looked over at his son. He looked so old. He looked so young. Hakoda wasn’t sure which one was worse. 

“But,” Hakoda said softly. “Do you know what is absolutely awesome?”

Katara looked over, grinning at him. “What?” she asked.

Hakoda let out a deep breath, and smiled up at the sky. 

“When history remembers me, they won’t remember me as the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe. They will remember me as Sokka and Katara’s father. My name will go down in history as a footnote in the greatness of my children’s glory. My memory will live exactly in the way I’ve thought of myself since the day you both were born. The father of two stars.”

He looked down, and both Sokka and Katara looked sad. 

“That’s awful,” Katara said quietly. “Don’t you want to be remembered for yourself?”

Hakoda smiled down at her, picking up her hand and squeezing it. “I always knew that the two of you would be better people than I ever was. I can think of no greater legacy to leave than the memory of my children’s greatness. There is no other way I would want to be remembered.”

Sokka gave him a crooked smile. Katara laughed and shook her head. “You and Iroh are the same, you know that?” she said, clearly amused.

Hakoda smiled. “Bato’s told me.”

Sokka snorted. “Of course he has. No one can beat that man at the salt game.”

“I don’t know,” Katara said. “I think Suki might give him a run for his money.”

Sokka nodded thoughtfully. “This is a valid point,” he said, stroking his chin. 

Hakoda laughed and shook his head. “You two are disasters.”

Sokka grinned up at him. “Where do you think we got it from?” he said teasingly.

“Your mother and Bato,” Hakoda said without hesitation. 

Katara and Sokka both started laughing. Hakoda grinned, and tugged them into his side. 

Katara and Sokka fell asleep there leaning on him. Hakoda stayed awake, staring up at the stars. 

He thought about the night Katara was born. Falling asleep with his children and his wife, happy enough to fly. 

He was one love short of that dream now, but he was still happy, albeit in a more bittersweet way. He stared up at the stars, and the moon, and the endless black sky.  _ You would be so proud of them,  _ he thought at his wife’s ghost, endlessly hovering in his lungs and the sky, just out of reach.  _ Sad,  _ he thought.  _ But so proud. _

Sokka snored, and Hakoda jumped. Katara shifted, sinking further into his side. 

Hakoda thought about her letter. 

_ We can’t promise anything will be the same,  _ she had said.  _ But we can promise that we’ll be here.  _

They had done good on that promise. And they were right. Almost nothing about what they had was the same as what it once was. 

But maybe that didn’t have to mean it was worse. Different could still be good. 

Hakoda curled his arms around his children, and stared at the sky.

Yeah. This would be okay. This would be enough.

Sokka snored again, and Hakoda laughed softly. 

Yeah. This would be more than okay. 

Hakoda tipped his chin up, and closed his eyes. A smile stretched over his face, soft and a little bittersweet, and he wouldn’t change a thing about it. 

_ Miracles,  _ he thought, pulling his children closer. 

_ Miracles. _


	2. Language Key!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Language Key, because, as previously stated, I am a menace who made up languages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, this is just a little thing I forgot to add to the notes of the other chapter, but, all the way back on my first fic I think, someone asked me for Hakoda being a supportive figure for Aang, so I gave you all Aang and Hakoda supporting each other! I hope you liked it! 
> 
> Don't worry, this chapter is still just the Language Key. If you see words in here that you can't find in this fic, they have been used in other fics of mine or unpublished drafts. That's something that would stress me out, so I figured I'd tell you. 
> 
> Anyway. Go forth and enjoy my chaos!

Language Key

Air Nomads

Yuoe- (you-OH-ey) moon

Relame- (reh-la-mey) ( _ me  _ pronounced like in mesa) to mourn

Sai- (sigh)(said quickly, like saying  _ lie _ ) with

Relame sai Yuoe- to mourn with the moon; it is a tradition of the Air Nomads that if you have suffered a great loss, you should try to let yourself begin mourning when the moon rises and cease when the sun rises, as a way of reminding yourself that even though you need to mourn, you should not stop living, that the person/people you are mourning would want you to find peace and happiness, too.

Erave- (eh-RAH-vey) spirit, add - _ v  _ to the end to make plural, spirits ( _ Eravev).  _ The word refers to either a spirit(s) that can be named, or one that cannot. 

Uole- (oo-OH-lay) song, or expression of feelings

Eravev-Uole- prayers for the spirits; the Air Nomads give thanks and gratitude for nature, and the world that they live in, either with traditional chants or with personal ones of their own making. They can be given at any time, in any way that is not disrespectful to the spirits, but are usually given at least once a month. The chants are believed to give the spirits recognition, and that by acknowledging them, the people will be more listened to by the spirits. The other nations used to have similar practices, but they faded away over time. This has left the Air Nomads with a closer relationship to the spirits of nature than other cultures, as they acknowledge both spirits that can be named, and spirits that cannot be named, by using the collective term  _ Eravev,  _ instead of only acknowledging the major spirits with well known names (ex. Tui and La, Agni, ect.)

Quere- to share

Vidale- life

Cuolefar Heobe- (COO-oh-LAY-far A-oh-BAY)creeping lilies, a type of flower that grows by the Southern Air Temple; they cling to rocks, and bloom in the spring, and over the course of the spring, they shift from their beginning pinks to purples. Also called  _ Anefar Jurente  _ by the children of the temple

Anefar Jurente-(Anay-FAR who-REN-tay) sundrop flowers; another name for  _ Cuolefar Heobe _

Quere Vidale- (COO-eh-re vee-DAH-lay)an old tradition in which one observes another culture through someone who actively practices in a place where it is actively practiced 

Veshereh- (veh-sher-eh)soul sibling, a very powerful way of saying, ‘you are my family’. It places emphasis on emotional bonds, and a very deep feeling of love and care. 

Anefar Oanii- (Anay-FAR oh-AH-ni) sun oasis, a string of connected ledges high on the cliff above the Western Air Temple with small pools and gardens that are traditionally tended to by the children of the temple

Water Tribes   
  


Southern

Te Kavéle- (Teh Kah-VEH-leh) literally means,  _ you rot,  _ but it is also a curse word used to speak ill of someone else, meaning that they are lower than rot, or,  _ I hope that you rot _ . To add - _ ne  _ to the end is to say the curse directly to the person you are speaking with ( _ Te Kavélene). _ It is a term of utmost disrespect, and is not ever used in a joking manner.

Fecin- (feh-siin, siin sharp and short) a piece of poop, or something that no one wants to be around, even just for long enough to deal with it.

Shaimek- (SHY-meck) brother, either emotional or biological; to add - _ e  _ to the end is to place emphasis on _ little  _ brother (Shaimeke), and to add - _ a  _ to the end is to put emphasis on  _ big  _ brother (Shaimeka) (can be used as a technical term or a term of endearment)

Shaimel-(SHY-mel) sister, either emotional or biological; to add - _ e  _ to the end is to place emphasis on _ little  _ sister (Shaimele), and to add - _ a  _ to the end is to put emphasis on  _ big  _ sister (Shaimela) (can be used as a technical term or a term of endearment)

Teiekiou- (tey-EE-KEY-oo) empty head, an insult used to say basically, your brain is not there, or your brain  _ is  _ there, but you choose not to use it

Hue Weamen Tewakel- the warm night, the part of the polar winter when the sun does not rise above the horizon, and everyone stays inside and reconnects with their family

Jeunik- (Zhay-oo-nick) a type of seasoning made from seaweed that is dried and then ground into a fine powder, used in many different types of Water Tribe cuisine. There are three different kinds of seaweed used for different types of jeunik, and each is only able to be harvested for about three weeks per year.

Qanikejes- (KA-knee-KEH-zhes) pests; a word to insult people you consider friends or family without risking insult, because used as an insult, it is considered tame, with an understanding of the fact that the person using it cares about you

Retamue Untii- (reh-tah-MOO-EY oon-TEA) literally,  _ goodbye until,  _ Retamue Untii is a song sung traditionally by soldiers, usually family, who are separating for a battle that they may not return from. Its lyrics express sadness at having to part, but the hope that it will not be permanent. In the case of death however, the song implies that they will see each other again after their time on earth is done. The use of Retamue Untii, instead of Retamue Hewinaa, means that the singers believe, or at the very least hope, that they will see each other again before death, or will survive the battle and be reunited. 

Retamue Hewinaa- (reh-tah-MOO-EY hue-ee-NAH) Literally,  _ final goodbye,  _ Retamue Hewinaa is traditionally sung when the singers know it is the last time they will see each other on earth. It can be sung on deathbeds, in parting, or when soldiers separate for a battle from which they know they will not return. The song expresses love, and good wishes, and implies hope that they will be reunited when Death comes for them, and they leave the earth for the last time.

Yeune- (yay-oo-nay) elder, or  _ person who has seen more than me,  _ Yuene is a weighty term of respect with heavy cultural significance

Waivema Quinave- (WHY-vem-ah KEY-nah-VEY) literally,  _ highest waterbender,  _ this term is used universally by both tribes. It is an esteemed position in which one is recognized as the best waterbender in the world. The title is gained by either formally challenging the previous Waivema Quinave to a duel, and winning, or if the previous holder of the title dies or formally renounces the title and names someone his or her successor. Holding the title grants the holder significant power in both tribes, as they are usually well respected, and their opinions hold significant weight.

Teraniq- (tear-ah-NEEK) a piece of sculpted ice used in burial ceremonies for the Water Tribes. In the burial ceremonies of the Southern Water Tribe, bodies are laid on a glacier and exposed to the elements for three days while the house they lived in is cleaned and the air is rinsed. This is believed to release their souls from their physical form, and allow the souls of the dead to transcend to the spirit world, or else be reborn into the world. The bodies are then placed on a teraniq with some of their things (for use in the spirit world) and pushed back out to sea to return the bodies to Tui and La. In the Southern Water Tribe, each living family member places a flower in their hands before they are pushed out to sea, to symbolize the love they carry with them past the physical world. These traditions are similar in the Northern Tribe, but with small differences.

Weoirgf- (way-OR-ih-geef) literally ‘leech’, it is intended to give the implication that they are both up to no good, and not good enough to support themselves on their own without relying on people they have wronged, a rude connotation in the family-centered and interdependent communities of the Water Tribes, where to disrespect someone to the point you could be denied help in good conscience is basically taboo.

Fegina- (fezh-EE-nuh) a piece of poop

Rogoveq- (ro-GO-vek) literally, ‘blessed’, it is used as a way to express wonder or the perceived perfection of the thing you are looking at

Foavaeb- (foe-eh-VAY-b) literally, ‘I would not believe this if it were sung to me by a drunk man’. Basically means, ‘holy shit, this is crazy.’

Envuqi- (en-VOO-key) a term of endearment, usually for one’s own children. Literally translated, means, ‘closest to my heart’. Plural: envuqes

Wet pon veuni- (wet pon vey-OO-ni) means, ‘go with my love,’ a farewell typically reserved for close friends or family. 

Northern

???  
  


Earth Kingdom

Yetan Gegar- a type of food, consisting of cooked meats and/or vegetables in wraps of thin crust.

Reca we, gengai- (Ray-ka WAY gen-GUY) for you, again; an expression used to say, ‘this was worth it, for you’, or ‘this was no problem’, or, literally, ‘I would do this again for you’ but is associated with feelings of fondness or care

Ue gethahew ne kow jinawel undue peones, neu kow jinawel yen ues amoren tekahanes. - I fight not for the blood on my hands, but for the blood in the veins of my loved hearts

Kentare- (ken-TAH-rey) little, used as either a descriptor or a term of endearment.

Owehvo- (o-WAY-vo) big, either used as a descriptor or a term of endearment. Kind of the opposite of ‘kentare’

Weki Tashawvqn- (weh-KEY Tah-SHAW-vook-n) literally means,  _ Blue devils.  _ It is the name of a band of pirates that raids small Earth Kingdom villages for supplies, and to take slaves for Fire Nation markets.

Ohef oihao, ifvhoib aeveq- (oh-HEF oy-HOW eve-HOYB ey-veck) walk swiftly, breath soundly; it is an ancient saying of good luck and well-wishing, and is typically reserved for people considered close family

Vahni- (Va-KNEE) derived from the word  _ vahnimo,  _ which literally means ‘sister’, vahni is a term of endearment like sister, or friend, with a strong connotation of emotional closeness

Tenavi tekahane oubapo wihen- may your heart beat smoothly; a wishing of security, peace, and happiness

Oreitucybes- (or-EY-TOO-seeb-es) literally just means ‘morons’

Fire Nation 

Enhaou kai- (en-HOW-OO kai) teacher, or, person more intelligent than me whom I hold in high respect; it is one of the few gender neutral honorifics in the Fire Nation language

Mhakenyik- (Ma-ken-YEEK) literally means  _ not yet big _ , a term of endearment used to imply smallness, but also great potential

Blodfrewj-(Bluth-FREW-zh) blood-traitor, betrayer

Juan Hyemina- (joo-AHN hyeh-ME-nuh) literally  _ air sugar _ , a Fire Nation town on one of the smaller islands in the archipelago

Hau Lingja- (hwah LING- zhuh) literallly  _ red river,  _ a town in the Fire Nation named for the massive rust-colored river it sits near

Openaiv- (oh-PEN-NAIV) another Fire Nation town on one of the larger islands, renowned for its impressive sea trade and extensive underground bending leagues

Wenshaou te- (WHEN-shao-oo tey) woman of great courage and strength; this honorific is generally used for figures of high authority or power, and usually denotes that the speaker wishes to imply that the person they are speaking to or about is greater than they are

Jino Afuar- (ZHEE-no AF-WUAR,  _ waur  _ said like  _ tar _ ) a type of expensive rum known for its use of fruits from multiple nations

Ponivar- (poh-KNEE-var) An island in the east part of the Fire Nation known for its impressive rums. It also ships out oak wood, sugarcane, and molasses, and before the war was one of the wealthiest towns in the world. Even during and after the war, it maintained incredible wealth, lots of the revenue stream switching to selling oak wood as fuel for the Fire Nation army machines and firewood for the camps.

Ivaif oshao, jenhingyai teki- spread out, drive them back

Wenshinas- (when-SHE-nas) an affectionate term for close friends, typically female.

Laonji Draina- (La-on-JEE dry-A-na) water dragon, implied to be female.  _ Draina,  _ or  _ dragon,  _ is commonly used as a title of extreme ferocity or power, typically given to those who have proved themselves in battle or hard situations.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! You made it! How was it? Was it great? Was it a smoking hot dumpster fire? You decide!
> 
> So, I promise I love Hakoda. I just had to put him through it. I feel like we didn't quite get the full scope of how it would have gone down in canon, simply because we didn't have the time to see the fallout of his relationships with Katara and Sokka besides that one time Katara yelled at him. I feel like I gave him a good happy ending though. I wanted to emphasize how his relationships with his children have changed by the end. They aren't the same. But that doesn't mean they aren't still valuable, or still beautiful. 
> 
> So, I am super super tired, so I'm going to wrap this up with slightly less rambling than usual. 
> 
> Sadly, this will probably be the last installment in this series for a while. I am not abandoning it, but I think I am going to start experimenting some with chaptered works. So if you like my works, feel free to check back in at some point. 
> 
> Since I first posted, the support I have gotten for this series is more than I ever expected, and I am still blown away. You all are truly the best. If you want to leave a comment, they always make my day. 
> 
> As always, Grammar Police, police away. If you have any constructive criticism for me, I welcome it. Shoot me a comment and when I come back to this series I will try to work on it. 
> 
> I thank you all to the moon and back for putting up with my rambling, my circular thoughts, for making me smile over work that I may not think is the best. You all are amazing, and I love you all. 
> 
> Stay safe, do things that make you happy, and keep being the amazing beautiful humans that you are!


End file.
